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AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 
THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 


VOLUME FIVE 
CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND TOMORROW 


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AN 
OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 
THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 


The Five Volumes 


VotumE I: Tue Birtu oF CHRISTIANITY 


The Life Stories of Jesus and Paul and the effect of those lives in shaping 
the course of Christianity’s first hundred years. 


VotumE II: Tue Buitpers or THE CuurRcH 


The story of the Church and its leaders, the empires ‘and the peoples 
of Europe, for fifteen centuries, through the days of Constantine and Charle- 
magne up to the eve of the Reformation. 


VotumeE III: Tue Rist or THE Mopern CuHurRCHES 


The evolution of the various Christian communions from the time 
of Luther to the present, and their contribution to the religious spirit of 
the period in Europe and America. 


VotumE IV: CurRIsTIANITY AND MopERN THOUGHT 


The impact of Christianity on the development of modern science, 
philosophy, government, education, industrial and economic movements, 
and the arts. 


VoLuME V: CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND TOMORROW 


An estimate of our present achievement, and a challenge to our further 
advance, in all the relations of life—the family, the community, the nations, 
the races, the churches, and the whole field of civilization at large. 


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AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


THE STORY OF 
OUR CIVILIZATION 


IN FIVE VOLUMES 
Illustrated in Color and in Black and White 


VOLUME FIVE 


CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND TOMORROW 


NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1926 
BETHLEHEM PUBLISHERS, INC. 


Printed in the United States of America 


HIS book went to press as a manuscript but 
through the death of R. Harold Paget, it has 
been transformed into a monument to the memory 


of the man through whose genius and self-devotion 
the publication of “An Outline of Christianity” 
was made possible. 













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GENERAL PREFACE 


N OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY as presented in this first 
fn edition is the embodiment of an idea whose actual 
materialization has occupied three years. The need for the 
book is evident. Thousands of volumes have been published 
in the fields of Christian theology and ecclesiastical history; but 
no work has, while describing Christianity’s total course of 
nearly twenty centuries, hitherto attempted to appraise the scope 
of its influence in shaping the civilization of the world. Study 
has been made, times without number, of the stewardship of 
Christianity as administered by the Church; endless treatises 
have been devoted to the variant opinions held by different types 
of religious bodies as to the proper function of that stewardship 
and the right method of its administration. Yet, until now, no 
effort has been made to focus the light of historical research and 
current scholarship on a plain record, for all who run to read, 
which should take the measure of the fruits of Christianity as 
manifest in the common round of human life, and which should 
announce the truth as to Christianity’s share in the upbuilding 
of our civilization. It is with the purpose of filling this gap, 
particularly for the readers of the English-speaking world, that 
the Outline has been prepared. 

In the approach to this difficult and complex undertaking 
there were several basic essentials for success. To begin with, 
the propounder of the idea gathered about him a Board of 
Editorial Management. Practical publishing experience was 
an imperative qualification for this Board, under whose hand a 
well-balanced organization must be built up, assuring the pro- 
duction of a work of indubitable authority and scholarship. 


xi 


xli GENERAL PREFACE 


Moreover, the book must make no sacrifice of exactness, while 
through its lucidity making vivid appeal to the average reader. 
Equally important was the duty of this Board to provide that 
so far as possible narrative continuity should obtain throughout 
the volumes, and that—each an integral whole—they should be 
linked together in proper sequence, apes tats a complete and 
well-articulated entity. | 

It appeared that these characteristics could most nearly be 
guaranteed through the appointment of a Directing Editor to 
take charge of each volume, who would superintend the detailed 
planning of it and give it the stamp of homogeneity. The 
necessity for separate Directing Editors was also indicated by 
a very far-reaching circumstance. During the last fifty years a 
flood of new light has been thrown upon the facts of Chris- 
tianity’s course, whereby the ebb and flow of its movement in 
the world has been traced by scholars in almost every line of re- 
search—in the sciences as much as in theology, in archaeology 
and in philology, in philosophy and psychology, in history, 
sociology, and political economy. In short, the necessity for 
over-sight by experienced Directing Editors became apparent 
from the fact that the work would have to be written by many 
collaborators, all of them authorities in their own respective 
. fields) An obvious corollary was that every writer must be 
selected for mastery of his subject, and without regard to the 
particular form of the Christian faith he might profess, These 
considerations at once determined for the undertaking the most 
liberal interdenominational basis, evidence of which can be seen 
in the tables of contents of the several volumes. 

Likewise was it essential to achieve in the five volumes of the 
Outline an effective harmony from the many minds that were 
to join in giving us this narrative of nearly two thousand years 
of Christian activity. The broadest Christian design for the 
book having been decided upon, by what means could be brought 


GENERAL PREFACE xiii 


about the desirable unity of a truly composite picture in the 
making of which so many pens would collaborater ‘The step 
taken to reach this unity without surrender of breadth and 
variety was the constituting of the Executive Editorial Board. 

It comprised ten representatives of five main types of Chris- 
tian faith in the English-speaking world. A rich and diversified 
contribution of experience was gained by the assignment to this 
Board of men of distinctive accomplishment in scholarship, 
pastoral work, and administration. This Board has co-operated, 
too, with the Board of Editorial Management in resolving what 
range of subjects the book should embrace; in grouping the 
contents of every volume; and in assisting in the selection of 
the Directing Editors, as well as of the authors to whom the 
different sections and chapters should be allotted. One of the 
most exacting functions of the Executive Editorial Board, in 
conjunction with the Directing Editors and Board of Editorial 
Management, has been the thorough-going scrutiny of all the 
manuscript, revision of which has been carried out under their 
combined guidance, with the special purpose of attaining the 
most genuinely interdenominational view-point. 

The responsibility of the Editorial Boards, and of their in- 
dividual members, is towards the work as a whole, and towards 
its spirit and purpose. Questions of ascertainable fact have 
been carefully checked to assure accuracy; but interpretation 
of fact is in each case to be regarded as an expression of the 
personal view of the writer. 

For the further assistance of the Board of Editorial Manage- 
ment and of the Executive Editorial Board, there was instituted 
an Editorial Council and an Advisory Council, consisting of 
specialists in many fields, an aggregation of experts to whom, 
individually, appeal could be made on matters of fact and of 
judgment. These bodies, with addition of a National Council 
including men and women of experience in social ‘service, 


xiv GENERAL PREFACE 


business, and education, and numbering adherents of other 
communions than those represented on the Executive Editorial 
Board, have, each in its own way, aided in the production of An 
Outline of Christianity. 

Only with a scheme of organization thus comprehensive could 
it be hoped to present a picture at once challenging and 
impartial of Christianity’s impact on the life of mankind during 
the last twenty centuries. 

THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR 


EDITORIAL BOARDS AND COUNCILS 
DIRECTING EDITORS 


VotumE I: ERNEST FINDLAY SCOTT, D.D., Professor of New 
Testament, Union Theological Seminary, New York, and 
BURTON SCOTT EASTON, PH.D., D.D., Professor of 
New Testament, General Theological Seminary, New York 


F. J. FOAKES JACKSON, D.D., Professor of Christian 


Institutions, Union Theological Seminary, New Y ork 


VotumeE II: 


VotumE III: SHAILER MATHEWS, D.D., LL.D., Dean of the Divinity 


School, University of Chicago 


FRANCIS J. McCONNELL, PH.D., D.D., LL.D., Bishop of 
Pittsburgh, Methodist Episcopal Church 


Votum_e IV: 


Votums V:, JOHN H. FINLEY, LL.D., L.H.D., Former Commissioner of 
Education of the State of New York 


EXECUTIVE EDITORIAL BOARD 


The Rev. Robert A. Ashworth, D.D. The Rev. gehn M. Moore, D.D. 


(Baptist) _ ; (Baptist 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ Chairman, Administrative Committee, Fed- 
in America. ; eral Council of the Churches of Christ in 
The Rev. Nehemiah Boynton, D.D. America 


(Congregationalist) Chairman 
Chairman, International Committee of 
World Alliance for International Friend- 
ship Through the Churches 


The Rev. David G. Downey, 


The Rev. Lewis T. Reed, D.D. 
(Congregationalist) 
President, New York City Congregational 
Church Association, Inc. 


Pattie .L.D: (Methodist) The Rev. Ernest Findlay Scott, D.D. 
Book Editor for the Methodist Episcopal (Presbyterian) 
Church Professor of New Testament, 


The Rev. Burton S. Easton, Ph.D., 
D.D. (Episcopal) 
Professor of New Testament, 

General Theological Seminary, New York 


The Very Rev. Hughell E. W. Fos- 
broke, D.D. (Episcopal) 
eg General Theological Seminary, New 
or 


Union Theological Seminary, New York 


The Rev. Tertius van Dyke 
(Presbyterian) 
Member of Board of Foreign Missions, 
Presbyterian Church, U.S. A. 


Bishop Luther B. Wilson, LL.D. 
Methodist Episcopal Church 


xvi EDITORIAL BOARDS AND COUNCILS 


EDITORIAL COUNCIL 


James Rowland Angell, Uitte 


ELD: 
President, Yale University 


Frank Aydelotte, Litt.D., LL.D. 


President, Swarthmore College 


Miss Bernice V. Brown, Ph.D. 
Dean, Radcliffe College 


Nicholas Murray Butler, LL.D., 
Litt.D. 


President, Columbia University 


The Rev. Father Cornelius Clifford, 
SD. 


Columbia University 


Miss AdaL.Comstock, Litt.D.,LL.D. 
President, Radcliffe College 


Albert B. Dinwiddie, Ph.D. 


President, Tulane University 


The Rev. W. H. P. Faunce, D.L., 
1 By GP > 


President, Brown University 


Samuel G. Inman, LL.D. 


Executive Secretary, Committee on 
Co-operation in Latin-America 

The Rev. Frederick John Foakes 
Bohol: D.D. 


rofessor of Christian Institutions, 
Union Theological Seminary 


David Starr Jordan, LL.D. 


Chancellor Emeritus, Stanford University 


D. M. Key 
President, Millsaps College 


Henry Churchill King, D.D., LL.D., 
L.H.D. 
President, Oberlin College 

James Lukens McConaughy, Ph.D. 


President, Wesleyan University 


Dana Carleton Munro, L.H.D. 
Professor, Medieval History, 
Princeton University 


Walter Dill Scott, Ph.D., LL.D. 


President, Northwestern University 


J. T. Shotwell, LL.D. 
Professor of History, Columbia University 


The Rev. Willard L. Sperry, D.D. 
Dean, Theological School, 
Harvard University 


Nathaniel WrightStephenson,Litt.D. 


Yale Uniwersity Press 


The Rev. Robert E. Vinson, D.D., 
LL.D. 


President, Western Reserve University 


The Rey. Henry B. Washburn, 
pb By bb tA bg 2 
Dean, Episcopal Theological School, 
Cambridge, Mass. 


Talcott Williams, L.H.D., LL.D., 
Litt.D. 
Director Emeritus, Pulitzer School of 
Journalism, Columbia University 


Miss Mary E. Woolley, Litt.D., 
L.H:D., Lind: 
President, Mount Holyoke College 


EDITORIAL BOARDS AND COUNCILS 


NATIONAL COUNCIL 


Dr. Ambrose M. Bailey 
Seattle _ 

Dr. William E. Barton 
Oak Park, Ill. ; 

Hon. Albert J. Beveridge 
Indianapolis 

Oliver C. Billings 
New York City 

Col. Franklin Q. Brown 
New York City 

Irving T. Bush 
New York City 

Mrs. Richard C. Cabot 
Cambridge 

Dr. S. Parkes Cadman 
New York City 

Mrs. G. C. Christian 
Minneapolis 

B. Preston Clark 
Boston 

Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin 
New York City 

Mrs. George W. Coleman 
Boston 

Bishop Earl Cranston 
New Richmond, Ohio 

Mrs. E. G. Denniston 
San Francisco 

Frank C. Dodd 
New York City 

Gano Dunn 
New York City 

Lucius R. Eastman 
New York City 

Dr. Samuel A. Eliot 
Boston 

The Rt. Rev. J. E. Freeman 
Washington, D. C. 

Dr. George A. Gordon 
Boston 

Mrs. A. Barton Hepburn 
New York City 

Hon. Hamilton Holt 
New York City 

Clark Howell 
Atlanta 

The Rt. Rev. J. H. Johnson 
Los Angeles 

Dr. M. Ashby Jones 
Atlanta | 

C. Clothier Jones 
Philadelphia 


Henry Bourne Joy 
Detroit 

Elmer L. Kidney 
Pittsburgh 

Rudolph H. Kissel 
New York City 

Hugh McKennan Landon 
Indianapolis 

Miss Margaret McGill 
Boston 

Dr. Robert A. Millikan 
Pasadena 

William Fellowes Morgan 
New York City 

Dave H. Morris 
New York City 

John R. Mott 
New York City 

Bishop Thomas Nicholson 
Detroit 

Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick 
Washington, D. C 

George Foster Peabody 
New York City 

Professor Michael I. Pupin 
New York City 

Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt 
New York City 

Herbert L. Satterlee 
New York City 

Joseph H. Sears 
New York City 

Henry D. Sharpe 
Providence 

The Rt. Rev. Herbert Shipman 
New York City 

Frank H. Simonds 
Washington, D. C. 

Dr. Robert E. Speer 
New York City 

Mrs. Robert E. Speer 
New York City 

James M. Speers 
New York City 

Orville J. Taylor 
Chicago 

H. B. Thayer 
New York City 

Charles G. Washburn 
Worcester - f 

Hon. Curtis D. Wilbur 
Washington, D. C 


XVli 


xvill EDITORIAL BOARDS AND COUNCILS 


ADVISORY COUNCIL 


The Rev. Peter Ainslie, D.D., 
Lie 


Editor, Christian Union Quarterly 


The Rev. Samuel M. Cavert 
Federal Council of Churches 


Galen M. Fisher 


Institute of Religious and Social Research 


The Rev. Sidney L. Gulick, D.D. 
Federal Council of Churches 


The Rev. William P. Merrill, D.D. 
Pastor, Brick Church, New York 


The Rev. Charles S. Mills, D.D. 


General Secretary, Pilgrim Memorial Fund 


The Very Rev. Howard C. Robbins, 
D.D 


Dean, Cathedral of St. John the Divine 


George H. Sandison, Ph.D. 
Vice-President, The Christian Herald 


The Rt. Rev. Charles L. Slattery, 
D.D 


Bishop Co-adjutor of Massachusetts 


The Rt. Rev. Ernest M. Stires, D.D. 
Bishop of Long Island 


BOARD OF EDITORIAL MANAGEMENT 


R. Harold Paget 
Editorial Director 


D. E. Wheeler 
Managing Editor 
David Lloyd 
Art Director, Managing Editor 


Lionel Strachey 
Literary Editor 


C. Paget 
Assistant Editor 


Charles A. MacLean 
Consulting Editor 


Virginia H. Heal 


Secretary 


Albert G. Glidden 


Treasurer 


CONTENTS 
VOLUME FIVE 
CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND TOMORROW 


DirectTinc Epitror 
JOHN H. FINLEY, LL.D., LH.D. 


Page 
tT ED eh Oe PS BE OA ae AEE ER, rT + AR a xi 
Porat BOARDS OA NOSCOLING LLG. 01: athena e ees cathe xv 
PEE DUS Pere LPS UI LL CDN ee has trata ak po bp 20's ah wndlighity UAB G WAV 9 6g: ol ew Xxili 


INTRODUCTION: THE WORLD TODAY AND YESTERDAY 1 
By L. P. Jacks, Principal of Manchester College, Oxford; Editor 
of the Hibbert Journal 


BOOK I 


THE INDIVIDUAL 


Chapter 
Teel YIN LGR ELSON PoA IND bie’, orale oi Moe A ee kn aoa 13 
By JoHn H. FINteEy, Lu.p., LH.p., Former Commis- 
sioner of Education of the State of New York 


Ba eal Lees Cdk Pel) LL ee Vee real MEG he a aide old: ale & 28 
By NATHAN SODERBLOM, D.D., LITT.D., C.L.D., Arch- 
bishop of Upsala 


III: WOMAN’S NEW PLACE IN THE WORLD ...... 36 
By Emma Batvey Speer, President of the National 
Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association 


Pere te. EN DOE bn AMITY SLE rere ye Sk) oy, 44 
By Mary Witicox GLenn, Charity Organization 
Society, New York 


BOOK II 
THE COMMUNITY 
WetnGae) Ny DR KeLESL ROR NetKCOU ANH aters, aa etaats ob aces eee eae 55 
By Kenyon Leecu BUTTERFIELD, LL.D., President, 


Michigan Agricultural College 
XIX 


XX 


Chapter 


VI: 


VII: 


VIII: 


XI: 


All: 


ALLL 


XIV: 


XV): 


CONTENTS 


CITY VET eis Brea wo eva ete tay Ragen eee Or Ore ats te 
By H. Paut Dovuetass, p.p., Institute of Social and 
Religious Research 


CITY AND UTOWN PLANNING eee eae 
By Gerorce B. Forp, President, American City Plan- 
ning Institute and National Conference 


BUSINESS: Bo THHIGS Gav Oo . Scea teat ete eae 
By Francis B. SHorRT, D.D. 


THE RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP (ioc eee tee 
By R. M. Maclver, puH.p., Head of Department of 
Political Science, University of Toronto 


LAW ANDTHE CHRISTIAN: CODE iy estes 
By Roscor Pounp, PH.D., LL.p., Carter Professor of 
Jurisprudence and. Dean of the Law School of Harvard 
University 


GOVERNMENT‘ AND CIVIGi DUTY tire. eee 
By WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO, PH.D., LL.D,, Professor 
Municipal Government, Dean of Department of History 
and Economics, Harvard University 


BOOK III 
THE NATIONS 


THE UNITED STATES AND CHRISTIAN STATES- 

MANSHIP 4 eis. 8 a tee Uae ae = betas ne ee 
By James G. McDona tp, Chairman, Executive Com- 
mittee, Foreign Policy Association 


THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND CHRIS- 

TIAN STA TESMANSHIP Sok 45 S49 eee Pe ane es 
By Purtip Kerr, M.H., c.H., Formerly Editor of “The 
State’, South Africa; first editor of ‘The Round 
Table” 


EUROPEAN NATIONS AND CHRISTIAN 
STATESMANSHIP. 3), AWG OTs) cee ee ees 


By Cuar.es H. Brent, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Western 
New York 


SPANISH AMERICA AND CHRISTIAN STATES- 
MANSHIP © Sta AeA wires Se ce alee Care ena Ee 
By Ropert Brenes Mesen, Associate Professor of 
Literature, Philosophy and Education, Syracuse Uni- 
versity ; formerly Minister Plenipotentiary to the United 


States, and Minister of Foreign Relatioss, for Costa 
Rica 


89 


95 


106 


115 


127 


149 


164 


178 


CONTENTS xxi 


Chapter Page 


OUT CA IAVVE, COE INDE LOIN (aco pia oie: sain MER AR Hl eels > 3 187 
By Davin Hunter Mittuer, Lu.M., Author of ‘‘Reser- 
vation to Treaties’’, etc. 


BOOK IV 
THE RACES 


XV ears HE RACK PROBLEM: se ys sabe tebe ds 6 EN wes 201 
By Bastt Matuews, M.A., Director of “Outward 
Bound”; Author of ““The Clash of Color’, ete. 


Dey Pepe OLIN AT RUE Porn memes sats ogee dhas 210 
By Rosertr E. Speer, p.p., Secretary, Presbyterian 
Board of Foreign Missions; Author of “Race and Race 
Relations’, etc. 


NT akie DLV Lea AALLGJIN, cadvenA ho ayree Ake BERD bie Oc ss 219 
By Sionty Lewis GULICcK, D.D., Secretary, Commission 
on International Justice and Goodwill, Federal Council 
of the Churches of Christ in merica 


BOOK V 
CHRiSTENDOM AS SEEN BY OTHER FAITHS 


AAS A, JEWISH VIEW OR. CHRISTENDOM?) ¥. 2.23%. 
By Maurice H. Harris, pu.p., Rabbi, Trustee and 
Member of the Faculty of the Jewish Institute of Re- 
ligion 

XXI: A MOSLEM VIEW OF CHRISTENDOM ......... 241 


By ABDULLAH YUSUF ALI, LL.M., C.B.E., Author of 
“The Indian Mohammedans’’,, etc. 


ree BINDUYVIEW/OF CHRISTENDOM? oot. ..cens's 252 
By KaMAKsHI NATARAJAN, Editor of “The Indian 
Social Reformer”, Bombay 


BOOK VI 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCHES 


XXIII: NATURE AND FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH .. 263 
By Wrti1am Epwin OrcuHarp, v.D., Minister of 
King’s Weigh House Church, London 


AAIV:; A NON-CHURCHMAN’S VIEW OF THE 
OIE ASCOT: OS 0, Ne RL ny 289 
By Roperr W. Bruerg, Director of Bureau of In- 
dustrial Research; Associate Editor of “The Survey” 


XXxil CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 
XXV: THE CHURCH’S VIEW OF NON-CHURCHMAN- 
pS OM sara unt’ GoM AN oot tite ah SE a IRD EB oa LY LU oy 298 
By Ernest M. STIRES, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Bishop of 
Long Island 


XXVI: WOMEN/ANDST HIS CHURCHES. . area 308 
By A. Maupe Roypen, formerly Assistant Preacher, 
City Temple, London; Author of ‘“The Hour and the 
Church”, etc. 


XXVII: THE ADVANCE TOWARDS CHRISTIAN UNITY.. 317 
By Rosert A. AsuworTH, D.p., Author of ‘“The Union 
of Christian Forces”; Member Administration Commit- 
tee, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America 


BOOK VII 
CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 


XXVIII: CHRISTIANITY AS A PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILI- 
LATION Wane creicinta wuslundes, otatarete penne etalon ten te ee 349 
By WiLi1Am LAvuRENCE SULLIVAN, D.D., Acting Pro- 
fessor of Theology, Meadville Theological Seminary, 
and Mission Preacher to the Unitarian Churches in the 
United States and Canada 


AXIX: CHRISTIANITY! ASHAMWAYIOF LIFE 24.02. 2a 362 
By Joun H. FIN Ey 
EVENTS’ OF THE PERIOD-A, CHRONOLOGY yan sue eee 379 
BIBLIOGRAPHY rh iii d} mcrae @ceipiera Uae aoe Bech ee 393 
INDEX 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING PAGE 


Moprern Commerce Reproduction in colors of the Wall Painting 
in the Royal Exchange by Frank Brangwyn 
Tue Capiro, AT WASHINGTON, East Front . ; ; “ 
House oF REPRESENTATIVES, Opening a Session with Prayer 
Tue Reicustac BuILpING, Bertin, Exterior . 
Tue REICHSTAG, BERLIN, A Typical Sitting 
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti View from the Cathedral "Geyer 
Port-Au-PRINCE, Haiti View from the Market Place 
NATIVES OF CHINA 
NATIVES OF SIBERIA 
Joun Howarp VISITING THE Prison | From ithe Painting by James 
Gillray 
Convicts ATTENDING A Service In Prison From a Drawing by Fred- 
eric de Haenen 
Boy Scouts CAMPING 
Boy Scouts OPERATING THE WIRELESS 
CouUNTRY CHILDREN IN A MAypoLe DANCE 
DELICATE SCHOOL CHILDREN RECEIVING INSTRUCTION IN THE OPEN 
AIR 
His First OFFENCE Reproduction in Colors of the Painting by Doro- 
thy Stanley 
Mme. ViIGEE-LEBRUN AND Her DAUGHTER “From the Painting by 
Marie-Anne Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun 
EpitrH Cavett From a sculptured Memorial 
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL Reproduction in Colors of the Painting by 
L. A. Tessier " 
(Copyright Braun & Go") 
CHARLOTTE BRontTE Portrait 
JANE AUSTEN Portrait 
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Portrait 
HarrittT BEECHER STOWE Portrait 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE From a sculptured Memorial! : : 
Curist Mourns Over THE City From the Painting by P. H. Flandrin 
(Copyright, Braun & Co.) 
AERIAL VIEW OF New York City AT THE BATTERY 
AERIAL VIEW oF LoNDON, SHOWING St. PAUL’s 
NEAR THE VILLAGE 
HARVESTING BY HAND 
SCENES IN INDUSTRIAL Districts 
(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 


e 


XX 


vii 


XXIV ILLUSTRATIONS 


PoTTERIES . 
(Conyright hdgar and Winiired Ween)" 
CoaL AND Iron 


(Copyright, dace and Wares ard), 
A Mininc CENTER : : 
(Copyright, Edgar and Winifred Ward). 
StreL Works’ Reproduction in colors of photograph 
(Copyright, Edgar and Winifred Ward) 
FURNACES ; 
(Copyright, Tidoes Lid.) 
Tuer Brack Country, STAFFORDSHIRE 
Tue Houses oF PARLIAMENT, View from the Te haanes 
Division Lossy OF THE Housre oF COMMONS 
House oF Commons, Interior 
PALACE OF THE LUXEMBOURG 
CHAMBER OF THE FRENCH SENATE 
PALACE OF THE SENATE, ROME 


e . 


. 


PALACE OF THE SENATE WITH MUSSOLINI ON THE Ricut 


‘THRONE. 
CHARLES EVANS Hucuss, Porirait 
WILiIiAmM Howarp Tart, Portrait 
Evinu Root, Portrait 
JAMES Monror, Portrait 
A NATIVE VILLAGE IN THE PHILIPPINE laeaos 
Tue Universiry Hatt Buitpinc at MANILA 


. . e 


FACING PAGE 


HAMPDEN WITH PymM oN THE Pornt OF EMIGRATING TO NW 
ENGLAND WHEN THEY WERE PREVENTED BY ORDER OF THE 


GOVERNMENT 
Epwarp Benes, Portrait 
GENERAL Smuts, Portrait 
J. Ramsay MacDona .p, Portrait 
Epwarp Herriot, Portrait 


. ° ° 


. . e 


Henry VII’s CHAPEL, AND CLoIsTERs, WwW ESTMINSTER . ABBEY 


(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 
SIGNING THE PEACE TREATY AT VERSAILLES 
Lorp Rosert Ceci1, Portrait 
Wooprow WILSON, Portrait . j 
Tue PaLace oF THE NATIONS AT Geneva 
GENEVA Reproduction in colors of a photograph 
NICARAGUAN COFFEE CarTS 
NicaRAGuANS: ‘THE RISING GENERATION 
A Native ‘CorNER oF NICARAGUA 
DoMINICAN WorKERS ON A Cocoa PLANTATION 
THe Main Street, Santo Dominco 
Havana, General View : 
CuBAN GIRL WorKERS IN THE ToBacco INDUSTRY 
NATIVES OF Mexico . 
CATHEDRAL AND NATIONAL Pataca IN 1 Mexico Ciry 
Huco pe Groor (Grortrus) Portrait 


. . 


. . e 


SIGNING THE TREATIES OF LOCARNO AT THE Britis 


OFFICE 5 


e . 


FoREIGN 


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192 


193 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


MustTArHA KeMat, Portrait . s } 
MAHATMA GANDHI, Portrait 
App-EL-Krim, Portrait 

A Rirr Hors—EMAN : 

Mopern TRANSPORT IN Nort AFRICA 
A Street IN TUNIS 

BooKER WASHINGTON, Parerale 


Necro Girus’ BAsket Ciass, TUSKEGEE INererure 


In A Macuine Suop, TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE 
MemorIAL TO BooKER WASHINGTON 
KAFFIRS a 

HovrreNTOTS 

KaFFIR WARRIORS Brrore Tate Kara 
LocaL ADMINISTRATION IN AFRICA 
CHINESE CHILDREN AT DRILL 

A Matay SERVANT 

A Matay Giri 

A Martay Woman : 

A Matray CHIEFTAIN 


EsTHER PLEADING FoR’ HER PEOPLE Reproduction,’ in colors of the Painting 


XXV 


FACING PAGE 
200 
200 
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208 
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212 
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228 
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by F. J. Barrias ‘ 230 
(Copyright, Braun & eae 
CARRYING THE LAw From the Painting by William Rothenstein Maen ae 
THE JEWISH CEREMONIAL SHOPHAR OR TRUMPET 233 
CovERING FOR THE SCROLL OF THE LAW 233 
JewisH Hancinc Lamp 4 233 
An ARABIAN JEW i 233 
GLASTONBURY ABBEY . : 240 
(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 
TINTERN ABBEY 241 
(Copyright, Tadoes Ona) 
Tue Muezzin 1n His Minaret CALLING THE FAITHFUL TO PRAYER 
Reproduction in colors 244 
Karr Bey Mosque at THE ToMBs OF THE CaLiPHs, Caro 248 
MoHAMMEDANS AT PRAYER 249 
CoLLECTING ALMs IN BuRMA: 256 
Hinvu HicH PRIEsT AT THE SACRED FESTIVAL, KuMBAKONAM an 
Hinpus BATHING AT THE SACRED FESTIVAL, KUMBAKONAM 257 
INTERIOR, ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S THE GREAT, LONDON 260 
(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 
BEHIND REREDOS OF CHESTER CATHEDRAL 261 
(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 
InN THE CLOISTERS, FOUNTAINS ABBEY 276 
CHAPEL OF Nine AttTars, FOUNTAINS ABBEY 276 
Fountains Apsey, Exterior 276 
(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 
INTERIOR, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL 277 
(Copyright, Judges’ Ltd.) 
Cominc From Cuurcu Reproduction in colors of the Painting by 
Adolf Artz 282 


(By Permission of the Gockeriion of Giajoanl 


XXVI ILLUSTRATIONS 


‘THE REVEREND CONSTANCE COLTMAN, Portrait 

Tue REVEREND Mary Co_tiins, Barerait 

THE REVEREND Dr. ANNA Howarp SHAW, Porat 
Miss Mauve Roypen, Portrait 

Mrs. Montessori, Portrat 

Frances Mary Buss, Portrait 

VISCOUNTESS Astor, Portrait 4 

CCOUNTESS OF HuntiNcpon, Portrait . 


FACING PAGE 
ayeake 
CKMBIS 
a toedZ 

312 
313 
313 
313 
313 


THe LAMBETH CONFERENCE, 1920, THE ‘Anousisrior OF Ganush 


BURY PRESIDING 


Tue Hoty Famity From the Painting by ‘Anthony van Dyck 


320 
321 










CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND TOMORROW 


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INTRODUCTION 


THE WORLD TODAY AND YESTERDAY 


exists on a large scale in the twentieth century, but not 

on a scale at all commensurate with the profession of it. 
Gustave Le Bon, in his book “The World Unbalanced”, says 
that the great nations never hated one another as bitterly as they 
do now, these years after the World War. No doubt he exag- 
gerates; nevertheless, there is clearly no love lost between the 
great nations, or at least between their governments, nor between 
the different classes, such as employers and employed, that con- 
stitute industrial society. Even if we had learnt to love each 
individual human being in the world as we love ourselves,— 
which of course we are far from having done,—all that would 
not amount to so very much if at the same time our group or 
mass action, in races, nations, classes, and parties, were based on 
unneighborly principles. We should still have wars and revo- 
lutions, and they would be all the more horrible because they 
would involve us in doing harm to men in the mass while loving 
them individually. 

This it was that made the World War so exceptionally tragic. 
The hatred of individual belligerents was not very strong, but 
the mass hatred was appalling. Vast numbers of the fighters 
on both sides were composed of men who, if left to themselves, 
would have died rather than kill an individual human being. 
Yet these same men killed one another en masse with exultation 
when acting officially and under the direction of the State. It 
looks as though individual love of one’s neighbor was no protec- 


tion against mass hatred. The present writer met an American 
1 


[J wssson ate sa the practice of neighborly love 


i AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


once who said to him, “I love every Englishman I come 
across, but I hate the English.” And the writer has heard 
similar things said in England about Americans. ‘That may be 
interesting as a psychological phenomenon. But it isn’t Chris- 
tianity. To profess ourselves Christians while our mass rela- 
tions remain in this pagan or barbaric condition is an abomi- 
nable insincerity. 

All Christian people today, whatever their particular creed 
may be, feel the pressure of this problem. Of course the doc- 
trinal differences that exist are important; but most of us have 
come to feel that we cannot take much interest in discussing 
those differences while we have this weightier matter on our 
souls. What is the use of discussing whether your form of 
Christianity or mine is the right one, so long as both of us 
have a secret feeling that neither of us, if judged by the moral 
standard of our religion, has the right to call himself a Chris- 
tian at all? Both of us are clearly too wrong on the practical 
side, for either of us to set up a claim, against the other, to be 
right on the theoretical side. Let us both see what can be done 
to abolish this fatal discrepancy between profession and practice, 
and then we shall be able to discuss our outstanding differences 
without that unpleasant secret feeling, which both of us now 
have, that we are humbugs. “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and 
do not the things that I say?” 

This it is that makes it so important for all of us to study 
the conditions in which our common religion had its origin in 
the first century of our era. The Christian missionaries of that 
time, although they used a language different from ours, were 
up against the very problem that is troubling ourselves. They 
had a remedy for these mass hatreds in the common love of 
Christ. Then as now it was in essence a social problem to which 
the new religion addressed itself, and an international one at 
that. 

The Roman Empire of that day was bringing all the nations 
of the then known earth into contact with one another. Great 
cities were growing up round the basin of the Mediterranean, 
and into these cities—Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 3 


Corinth, and many others—there flocked men of all races, 
tongues, and religions. Rome indeed was not unlike New 
York in that respect, though of course the scale was much less. 
Trade had developed enormously; the empire was rich and pros- 
perous; life and property were well secured; great roads spanned 
the empire in all directions and were thronged with merchants, 
travellers, sightseers, lecturers, philosophers, interpreters, re- 
ligious enthusiasts, and artisans in search of work; and in the 
great inns on the roads, and in the seaports, half the tongues 
of Babel might be heard. From Britain in the West to Mes- 
opotamia in the East, from the Rhine and the Danube in the 
North to Egypt in the South, that wonderful creation we call 
the Roman Empire imposed law and order upon a vast multi- 
tude of nations and religions, keeping the peace among them 
with extraordinary success, enabling them to hold free inter- 
course with one another and to share in the benefit of a common 
civilization. 

Having regard to the comparative slowness of communica- 
tions in those times, nothing quite so wonderful in the way of 
political organization has ever been accomplished in the history 
of the world. Within its limits—and they were immensely wide 
limits for those ages—the Roman Empire was a veritable league 
of nations. We may admire the federative capacity of the 
United States or marvel at the variety of races comprised within 
the British Empire, but after all the Romans were the pioneers 
who first proved that such things could be done, and showed 
the world the way to do them. And they did so with means 
at their disposal which compare with the means we enjoy as a 
hand-loom compares with a textile factory, or a galley rowed 
with oars compares with an ocean leviathan, when printing was 
unknown and months might elapse before a letter from an out- 
lying province would reach headquarters in Rome. When we 
think of the unity that characterizes international relations to- 
day we have no reason to be proud of ourselves. 

It is only when we remember what the Roman Empire was, 
and what a free circulation went on from the circumference to 
the center and back again, that we begin to understand the 


4 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


rapid spread of Christianity in the first century. Fifty years 
after the crucifixion of Jesus Christians were to be found in 
almost every city of the Mediterranean world, from the coast 
of Asia Minor to Spain. No doubt the Christian groups in 
many of these places were small; but the wide distribution of 
them shows what a wonderfully expansive power the new re- 
ligion possessed in the earliest times. Evidently there was some- 
thing in the needs of those times to which that religion brought 
satisfaction. With few exceptions the Gospel seems, as we say, 
to have “caught on” wherever it was preached. One of the 
exceptions was Athens, the most brilliant and talkative city of 
the ancient world. We are told that Paul could make no great 
impression there, the reason being that the Athenians were in- 
terested in the Gospel only as something fresh to talk about and 
grow argumentative over—a state of things which inhibits the 
spread of Christianity in the modern world even more than in 
ancient Athens. 

Along with this free circulation and intermixture of races 
which the Roman Empire had brought about there went a free 
circulation and intermixture of ideas and of religions. The 
process had begun in the fourth century B.C. with the conquests 
of Alexander the Great, which extended from Greece to India 
and scattered the seeds of Greek culture in every region 
traversed by his armies. The empire of Alexander was cosmo- 
politan and became far more so when the Romans, two cen- 
turies later, took it over and began exploiting its vast resources 
and knitting up its loosely jointed parts into a closer unity. 

But while the effect of this, outwardly, was to put a stop to 
wars and bring the peoples under a more stable and orderly 
government than they had ever enjoyed before, the effect of it, 
inwardly, was to produce a great confusion of ideas and of 
religions. Hitherto the many religions both of East and West 
had been rooted to the soil on which they were born; they had 
flourished as national cults, stay-at-home things, each with its 
sacred cities and temples, where its rites were practised and 
its formulas spoken by priests who knew no language but their 
own, while the worshippers had no contact with other religions, 








Bets 4 eS 


Dt PeCAL LT OieA Tr WASHINGTON 


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ce emanate 


OPENING A SESSION OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WITH PRAYER 





NG 


EXTERIOR OF THE BUILDI 





A typical sitting 


THE REICHSTAG, BERLIN 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 5 


and perhaps were unaware that they existed. But now these 
stay-at home religions began to wander along the roads and the 
sea routes all over the face of the earth and come into contact 
with one another in foreign cities far removed from the seat of 
their native temples. Instead of the former rigidity and fixity 
there was now fluidity and movement. For example, there 
were Jewish colonies in every city of the Mediterranean; and 
a large one existed in Rome at the beginning of our era. In 
these places the Jews, cut off from their temple worship, had 
to practise their religion as best they could, with the cult of 
Greek and Roman gods going on under their eyes, and with a 
score of other religions from Egypt, Persia, and Babylon filling 
the city with their processions and building their temples next 
door to the synagogues. A Jewish merchant taking ship at 
Alexandria for Italy would find among his fellow-passengers 
people with all sorts of idols in their baggage; some would be 
saying their prayers to the sun, others would be burning incense 
_ to images of dogs and hawks. And what happened to the Jew 
happened, of course, reciprocally to all the others. 

Under these circumstances the various religions began to lose 
their rigid and distinctive character; each would take what it 
could from the others or part with something of its own char- 
acter; the genuine article became the adulterated article. The 
consequence was that the believer no longer had his old con- 
fidence in the power of his religion to save him from the evils 
of life and death. The Jew alone seems to have been able to 
keep himself quite aloof. But even for him his religion can 
hardly have been the same thing in Rome or Antioch that it had 
previously been in Judea. All religions were losing their con- 
nection with their native soil. That made a great difference, 
the extent of which it is not easy for us to realize, brought up as 
most of us have been under a religion inherently fit for world- 
wide adoption. 

Now that is precisely the religion that Paul and his fellow- 
missionaries offered to the world of his day; and it was exactly 
what the world of his day was ready to receive. In the general 
tangle which Roman civilization had brought about, the old, 


6 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


stable national religions were losing their power, their author- 
ity, and their prestige. It was nothing less than a stroke of 
genius which revealed to Paul the grand opportunity for preach- 
ing a religion that had nothing to do with a man’s being a Jew 
or a Greek or a Persian or an Egyptian, but had only to do with 
his being a man: a religion which could override the immense 
confusion of the others and bring about a higher unity where 
race and nationality counted for nothing. Those who accepted 
this Gospel were immediately lifted above the divisions which 
separated nation from nation, class from class, and made equal 
fellow citizens of a spiritual realm, a city whose foundations 
were in heaven, where there was neither barbarian nor Greek, 
circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free. It was the 
solution of the “international problem” as it existed in those 
days, by which the ends of law and order were secured not by 
legislation and police, but by the free action of the Spirit per- 
meating all the members. One may say that Paul at one stroke 
transfigured both the political system of Rome and the moral 
system of the Jews into their spiritual equivalent. As for the 
earthly life, with its joys and sorrows, its good fortune or bad, 
its divisions between rich and poor, freeman and slave, all that 
was of little account in any case, since the true life of the be- 
liever was with Christ in the immortal world, to which every 
man belonged from the hour of his baptism and into the full 
possession of which he would enter at death. 

Yet it would be anything but true to say that Paul attached 
no importance to “conduct” in the earthly life—to the way a 
man fulfilled his part as member of the State or of the family, 
as neighbor to others like himself. In all these relationships 
a man was to act as became a citizen of heaven—not indeed 
following any human model of virtue or regulating his action by 
the letter of any law, but yielding to the impulse of the spirit 
and thereby attaining a far higher level of purity and brotherly 
love than was possible by any other means. It may be, as 
Matthew Arnold thought, that the real power of Paul’s religion 
lay in this. He had found an attitude of mind which gave him 
and those who followed him a living interest in righteousness 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION yf; 


and a fellowship with the “power not ourselves that makes for 
righteousness”,—(in Arnold’s phrase) the “secret” of Jesus, 
which has remained ever since the real driving power of the 
Christian religion no matter what form it has assumed. 

The labors of Paul in preaching this Gospel, the ardor of 
conviction with which he preached it, and the remarkable suc- 
cess he achieved are alike astonishing. And our astonishment 
becomes almost stupefaction when we reflect that all this was 
accomplished without the aid of a New Testament. During the 
whole period of Paul’s activity not one of our Gospels was in 
existence. It was certainly not by quoting the Sermon on the 
Mount, nor by telling them of the earthly life of Jesus, that he 
converted the Gentiles from paganism to Christianity, but by 
proclaiming the great fact of the Redemption. 

Here we see an obvious difference between the conditions 
under which Christianity is preached today and those which 
prevailed in the first century. For us today, Christianity is 
pre-eminently the religion of the New Testament. Imagine a 
Christian missionary today setting out to convert the heathen 
without a New Testament in his baggage—or even in his 
memory. Yet the success of Christianity under these conditions 
is so well attested a fact that it becomes a problem for scholars 
to explain why the Gospels came to be written at all, why a book 
other than the Old Testament came to be necessary. But what- 

ever the answer may be, the fact remains that the first and most 
_ difficult triumphs of the Christian religion were accomplished 
not by expounding a book, but by the inspirational force of the 
men who passed from city to city aflame with a spiritual life 
which, to them and to those who listened to them, had the 
effect of transfiguring and glorifying the meaning of the world 
and of human existence in the world. 

In the first century the chief enemies Christianity had to 
contend against were the pagan religions by which it was sur- 
rounded, and of which there were a great number, not all of 
them degraded religions by any means, though some were bad 
enough. Some of the great mystery religions, for example, of 
which there were seven or eight, and of which Mithraism was 


8 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the most popular, taught truths of great importance and gave 
both comfort and dignity to many human lives, insomuch that 
Paul himself did not hesitate to borrow from them in certain 
regards. Today also Christianity is in contact with other re- 
ligions, of which some, like Buddhism, are older than itself and 
whose followers outnumber its own. But the densest darkness 
with which Christianity has to contend today lies perhaps within 
its own borders and not outside. There is darkness enough out- 
side, of course, but the impression Christianity makes upon it 
is sadly hindered by the darkness that has been suffered to grow 
up among the Christian nations themselves. 

What do the Christian nations today really believe? ‘There 
are two ways of replying: first by considering what they say, 
and second by considering what they do. Judging by what they 
say the answer would be that the Christian nations believe in 
Christ. But what if we judge by what they do? The present 
writer will give in substance the answer as it was once given 
him by an enlightened Buddhist. “Judged by your actions,” 
he said, “and by the way you live in these great cities of yours, 
you Christians believe in money. Money is not all you believe 
in, of course, but there is nothing else you believe in quite so 
firmly. The God of Jesus is your Sunday God; but on week- 
days you worship Mammon. You look upon the universe as 
containing an infinite number of potential dollars or pounds 
sterling, and the business of your lives is to turn those potential 
dollars or pounds into real ones. You don’t really believe in 
the ultimate worthwhileness of anything else. Your great na- 
tions are great organizations not for serving God, but for ex- 
ploiting the universe. And since you can’t help getting in one 
another’s way you learn to hate one another and go to war.” 

Perhaps this Buddhist put the matter too strongly; but 
he was not far wrong, especially when he said that while, of 
course, the Christian nations believe in other things, there is 
none in which they believe quite so firmly as in this. ‘Their 
other beliefs waver and change. But this one is pretty constant, 
much the same in all countries, and always followed by the same 
effects—namely discontent, ill will, and a general feeling that 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 9 


human life is a rather sordid and unsatisfactory affair. From 
this source, too, proceed the whole crop of unneighborly mass 
actions which bring discredit on the Christian religion and cause 
its enemies—and some of its friends also—to declare that it has 
failed, 

If Christianity ever recovers the vigor it had in the first 
century it will fling itself against this belief in money with an 
ardor like that of Paul when he attacked the pagan cults of his 
day. It will be a terrible struggle and will call, just as in the 
old days, for heroic men and women to take their lives in their 
hands and care nothing for what happens to themselves. But 
the weapons of their warfare will be the same that enabled 
Paul and his companions to “cast down the strongholds” that 
opposed them in the first century, not carnal weapons but spir- 
itual. These heroic persons will not be mere fine talkers about 
religion, any more than he was—for he had a great contempt 
for that sort of thing. They will be men and women who have 
seen, as he saw under different circumstances, that this world of 
money-making in which we are all immersed is not the real 
world but only the half-real; that men in their true nature are 
citizens of a vaster commonwealth, of which the great nation on 
earth is no more than a symbol; that the citizenship of us all is 
in heaven; and that no earthly citizenship can be rightly fulfilled 
until its principles are drawn from the Eternal City of God, 
where there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, bar- 
barian nor Greek, bond nor free. 


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BOOK I 


THE INDIVIDUAL 


After following the story of Christianity and the vital part tt 
has so far played in our civilization, we now turn to the situation 
of the present and to the possibilities of the future. Individuals, 
communities, nations, races, churches are facing problems of the 
first magnitude everywhere. And first, the basis on which the 
entire fabric of society 1s reared is that of a man’s relations with 
his neighbors and his life within his home. 


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CHAPTER I 
MY NEIGHBOR AND I 


“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This, a law of the Old Testament, 

is proclaimed in the New Testament to be one of the two commandments on 

which all the Law and all the Prophets depend. What is involved ni this 
4 commandment? How can it be obeyed? 


ROM the story of apostles, prophets, martyrs, mission- 

aries, and the crowded hosts of men of faith in the fields 

of science, philosophy, and the arts, who have borne and 
honored the name of Christ from his day on earth to ours, we 
turn to ask what zeal and what purposes may make us of the 
twentieth century worthy to “follow in their train” as they fol- 
lowed our common Master. And it is for answer to that ques- 
tion that this survey of the Christian civilization, now in its final 
volume, leaves the record of the past to look narrowly at the 
opportunities and obligations which measure responsibility for 
Christians of today. The organization of humanity which 
marks the present age—ethnically, politically, industrially, 
commercially, socially, intellectually, and religiously—is to be 
viewed in rapid sequence, and from the phenomena so appear- 
ing is to be learned the continuing duty which Christianity 
incurs by recommending itself to men as the ultimate philosophy 
of life for the entire world. How it is to make good that 
stupendously comprehensive claim, what endeavor and what 
sacrifice the full service of Christian ideals is destined to com- 
mand, and what hopes may be justly rested on the efficiency of 
forces gathering and to be gathered in this behalf, these are 
aspects of the theme which must fix the stern interest of every 
mind that conscience has quickened into moral concern and 
vigilance. 

13 


14. AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Before that panorama is unrolled, however, it is appropriate 
to inquire by virtue of what confidence Christianity believes 
itself possessed of the spiritual and social formula for the cor- 
rection of all the maladjustments and the elimination of all the 
crudities of modern life. In the large it is of course a confidence 
in the adequacy of Christianity’s Leader. But specifically it 
is faith in the effectiveness of the body of teaching contributed 
by him towards the abolishing of the selfish rivalries which have 
always rent and torn human society. That formula was, all 
in all, if not the most important yet certainly the most original 
item in the whole body of teaching with which he surprised his 
time and has impressed succeeding ages. So unique was it that 
neither his own generation nor any generation of men since ever 
quite dared to trust it, and the method of Jesus accordingly re- 
mains to this hour untested by any broad-scale experiment 
commensurate with the scope of application for which he recom- 
mended it. But as the philosophies of paganism, of imperialism, 
of nationalism, of commercialism, and of materialism have all 
resulted in a common disheartening failure to tranquillize and 
unify mankind, it has come to pass that our own day, from sheer 
default of all else, is turning, as no previous time has done, to 
the wistful hope that the Nazarene did indeed know of what 
he spoke when he offered for the cure of the world’s bitterness 
one sovereign remedy, his second great commandment: ‘Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” It is put first here not be- 
cause it takes precedence in importance, but because it opens 
the door of approach to Him whom we have not seen. 

Before Christ no man in all the world had said a word equiv- 
alent to this commandment or indeed thought the kind of 
thought on which it was based. The words of the command- 
ment had, of course, been taken from the Hebrew Law, but no 
one, Jew or Gentile, had filled them with so rich a meaning as 
Jesus put into them, This is merely to say that apart from 
Jesus no philosopher ever conceived of solving the puzzles 
of man’s social life in terms of the other man. The Greeks 
considered the possibilities and limitation$ of human nature 
deeply and broadly, but their thinking never freed itself from an 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 15 


essentially subjective viewpoint. When through the question- 
ing mind of Socrates Hellenic philosophy passed from specu- 
lation on nature to the discussion of humanity, it was of course 
observed that man lives amid his kind and that his character 
conditions, and is conditioned by, his relations with those who 
live nearest him—in the same city, the same State. With 
Socrates first, but more particularly with Plato and Aristotle, 
his spiritual descendants, the study of these relations developed 
first into ethics and then into politics, and the most elaborate 
examination of these things of human concern which the world 
had ever known was the product of that epoch. But elaborate 
and penetrating as such studies were, none of these great philos- 
ophers or of their later disciples ever really got farther afield 
than an individualistic interest in the well-being of the good 
man-——which by interpretation meant their own type, the philos- 
opher. How should a man be good? was their guiding ques- 
tion. The approved answer was that he should be good by 
seeking happiness wisely. And how should he seek happiness? 
By dealing honorably with his fellow-citizens and by joining 
hands with them to establish and maintain a State so conducted 
as to make them all happy. 

It may be assumed by some that these remarks are offered in 
forgetfulness that ‘“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” was 
on the lips of Jesus not only actually, but consciously a quotation 
from the Mosaic Law of his own people. How then in view of 
that fact is it to be said that Jesus was so wholly original? If 
Rome and Greece and Egypt and Babylonia had never discov- 
ered the other man, had not the Jews found him? Is not the 
Pentateuchal source of the Lord’s saying, Leviticus xix. 18, full 
proof of that? And indeed it would be unfair to the Hebrew 
people not to recognize that in a far more radical reality than 
any other ancient nationality they preserved in their own land 
an actual commonwealth. There was among them no fixed or- 
der of aristocracy, and at the lower end of the social scale such 
slavery as existed was a modified institution curbed by the gen- 
eral emancipation that the Law required every fiftieth year. 
Moreover, an intense nationalism, fostered by the peculiar rites 


16 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


that separated them from their contemporaries and by their 
pride of what they considered their princely position under the 
special favor of heaven, reacted internally to solidify them not 
only in patriotic feeling but in common interests and reciprocal 
helpfulness, to a degree of social unity unrealized anywhere else 
in the civilization of their epoch. It was possible therefore for 
their Law to say what no other national law of that olden time 
could conceivably have said: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself.” But superior as was the sentiment of that injunction 
to any other humane thought of the ancient world, it was in its 
meaning as a maxim of Moses wholly incommensurable with 
the sense in which Jesus employed the same form of words. 
What he repeated verbally he invested with a significance in- 
finitely more ample and more demanding. From being a 
national code he enlarged it to a universal and eternal statute. 

“Thy neighbor” in the Levitical Law commandment was a 
Jew—a Jew and none else. The very sentence out of which 
Jesus picked his quotation exhibits that restriction unmistak- 
ably: “Thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear any grudge 
against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself.” Had the Lord repeated the verse entire, he 
would have said not even a cosmopolitan thing. It is, to be sure, 
true that a step farther on in the same chapter the neighborly 
obligation is enlarged to include a foreigner who has settled 
down in a Jewish community to live there, and so in the re- 
stricted sense of the term has become a literal neighbor—a 
“nigh-dweller”. But not a hint anywhere in the political or 
social constitution of Israel suggests eyes looking abroad with 
the desire of extending neighborly help beyond its own bound- 
aries. Even Israel’s prophets, for all their exalted and some- 
times evangelical spirit, seldom looked away to other nations 
with any beneficent thought; they were free to curse the way- 
ward among the heathen, but they did not often bespeak for 
them God’s mercy. And certainly the legalism of the nation 
cultivated no international kindliness; the Scribes and Pharisees 
were bigots in their patriotism as well as in their religion. And 
as the nation grew older and suffered more from the oppression 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 17 


of external tyrants, its spirit of isolated and scornful pride grew 
more bitter. By the time Jesus came the case had hardened into 
the bitter tragedy of the Jew against the world. A revealing 
light on the spirit of the times in Judea shines from that other 
passage where the Lord quoted this same verse—one of those 
places in the Sermon on the Mount where he protested against 
too narrow interpretations of the Old Scriptures: “Ye have 
heard that it was said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate 
thine enemy.” For the latter clause—‘hate thine enemy”— 
there was not a syllable of justification in the Mosaic writings 
to which their lawyers clung so passionately. It was simply 
and solely the painful “gloss” of an ever narrowing popular 
spirit on a maxim that never had been over-broad. 

If the lawyer who one day (as Luke relates) questioned 
Jesus about the conditions for inheriting eternal life had not 
been one of the narrowest of his exclusive kind, we might 
perhaps have been left unaware how far our Master went in 
the opposite direction of human inclusiveness. Though on 
other occasions Jesus himself had coupled together love to 
God and love to men as the first and second great command- 
ments, it was the interlocutor in this conversation who was led 
to repeat the same passages, not precisely as supreme com- 
mandments but as convenient summaries of the Law, in which 
way many rabbis had long been accustomed to allude to them. 
But when the lawyer, who doubtless thought it easy to love 
God in the measure of the Law’s requirements, had recited the 
companion demand for neighbor love, something in him 
revolted against accepting this as his duty toward all the Israel- 
ites he knew, many of whom in that faction-ridden time probably 
seemed to him wholly unlovable. So he appealed to Jesus to 
define “neighbor”. Obviously he was expecting limits to be set 
to the reach of the commandment even within the bounds of 
the Jewish heritage. If, as is likely, he was a Pharisee, he no 
doubt hoped for at least enough concession to permit him to 
hate the Sadducees for their laxness in doctrine and their 
truckling in politics. It was a hard stipulation to live up to; 
would not this liberal-minded rabbi from Galilee interpret 


18 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


it in more comfortable termsr Loving others as this lawyer 
loved himself was a burden too irksome for any great exten- 
sion. 

But were the tables ever turned on any man so quickly and 
so effectually as when the Lord discomfited the querying law- 
yer? His answer was a parable, and that parable was the story 
of the Good Samaritan. And at the climax of the story Jesus 
countered on the man with a Socratic question more skillful 
than Socrates himself ever devised: ‘Which of these three, 
thinkest thou, proved neighbor to him who fell among the 
thievesr” That “proved neighbor” was the sharpened and pol- 
ished point of the shaft with which the Master transfixed his 
questioner. Apart from the necessity, in which he was in- 
escapably entangled, of giving the palm of honor in the incident 
to one from a despised and ostracized race, of very near 
neighbors, this self-loving Jew who had been trying to reduce 
the roll of his own neighbors found himself confronted with 
quite the opposite ideal—the aim of discovering as many 
neighbors as he could. And by the simple means of intro- 
ducing into his brief but all comprehending drama a Samaritan 
as chief actor Jesus expanded the field for the accumulation of 
neighbors from the confines of a nation to the breadth of the 
earth. The Samaritan, impelled by nothing save the compas- 
sions of his own neighborly heart, crossed the boundary line of 
nationality with a single uncalculated and uncalculating step. 
“Go and do thou likewise”, was Christ’s sole counsel to the 
Jew; cross the line the other way; cross any line; the boundless 
universe is yours. 

It was the bringing in of this foreign figure—and he from 
a contemptible people of mongrel origin and scant attainments 
—which in this parable threw into conclusive relief the advance 
of Christ’s teaching beyond the principles and precepts of all 
teaching that had gone before it respecting man-and-man re- 
lations in this world. Here stands proof of the utter unique- 
ness of his message. Whereas the philosophers and statesmen 
of every nation (unless in this Moses is to be accounted an 
exception) had failed to create a neighborhood sensibility even 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 19 


among their own national population, Jesus suddenly, and with- 
out a precedent to support him in all the world of earlier times 
or of his own time, called on humanity for a neighborliness that 
knew no lines at all of either nation or caste. He first in all 
the earth proposed, by his interpretation of what had been only 
a localized Hebrew precept, to secure a unity of mankind in 
which differences of race, social condition, intellectual abilities, 
or even moral character should count as no differences at all 
compared with the one likeness of being man. And this prin- 
ciple of unity he erected into one of the two pillars on which he 
proposed to rest the whole fate of the Kingdom of God of which 
he was speaking so constantly. 

But how did this Man of Nazareth come by this amazing 
originality, proposing a social view of the human family to 
which no forerunner of his had even approximated? There is 
but one way of accounting for it. He first, because he was as 
Nicodemus truly said, “‘a teacher come from God”, got the view 
of all these human matters that God sees. Lawgivers and proph- 
ets, philosophers and rulers had all studied men’s relation- 
ships from a flat-earth viewpoint—the ordinary plane of outlook 
for the practical man. In modern phrase, they had carefully 
kept their feet on the ground, where all common-sense realism 
in statesmanship and sociology is to this day supposed to reside. 
But looking at conditions horizontally from the ground level, 
these human great men one and all had the picture distorted by 
the hills and valleys that appear so actual in an earthly land- 
scape of society. How plain it looks from this angle that some 
men are high and other men are low. But the God-seeing was 
as from overhead, and this was the vision which Jesus himself 
had and would give to other eyes. And that view like a photo- 
graph from the skies instantly blots out all elevations. In an 
aeroplane flight, from Egypt into Palestine, during the World 
War, the present writer had a physical view which was sug- 
gestive of this spiritual view of mankind. The desert was 
as level as the floor; the little clouds over the sea, two miles 
below, were as sheep in a meadow. The city of Gaza was in 
its entirety but as a gate which the strength of no giant would 


20 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


be required to carry away. Even the ee hills seemed as 
the plain of Sharon. 

The little undulations of the surface of society which in 
the opinion of men make kings and rulers to differ from com-- 
moners, or the learned from the ignorant, or the prosperous 
from the poor, simply disappear in Christ’s view of mankind. 
The divine eye that looks down on the scene cannot see any 
inequality at all. And the sight of Jesus was so perfectly ad- 
justed to that way of seeing that he could come to this world 
and never for an instant be deceived by the way things look 
here. From him therefore the disciples learned as a cardinal 
conception of his religion what with his Apostle Paul became 
almost a watchword: There is no distinction. 

And truly there is not. Christianity, rightly appraised, is the 
science of the differences that make no difference. All the dif- 
ferences which are of the earth earthy belong to that order, 
as far as concerns the Kingdom of God. Every man in God’s 
accounting is just a man—no more, no less. His color makes 
no difference; his ancestry makes no difference; his social 
status makes less than no difference. In this sense even his 
goodness or his badness makes no difference. Once this point 
of view is realized, the first great difficulty about loving one’s 
neighbor as one’s self is transcended. It at least becomes en- 
tirely practicable to esteem one’s neighbor as one’s self after 
one is convinced that God, to say the least of it, esteems the 
neighbor no less than self. It is strangely interesting to see 
how difficult it is for any man, after he has once sensed the 
way that God thinks about men and things, to conjure up a 
reason why he should think differently. The only superiority 
which God can from His height distinguish in one man above 
another is superiority in powers of service, and that, so far 
from lifting him to an eminence above his fellow men, only 
imposes a stronger obligation to identify himself with them 
and surrender himself to the ways of activity in which he can 
most effectively be to them a comfort, stay, and aid. 

No doubt such spiritual equalizing must ever to the worldly 
mind seem drastic. Indeed it is drastic. Its consequences are 








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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 21 


profound. It was because this view from overhead, reflected 
in repeated words of Christ, so deeply impressed the reformers 
—Calvin and Knox in particular—that the era of the Reforma- 
tion became the birth era of modern democracy. To think of 
men as they stand in the thought of their Creator, distinguished 
from one another neither by earthly accidents nor by earthly 
repute, is to wipe out every reason for deferring to the alleged 
inheritance of aristocracy, whatever its kind or form. All men 
equally responsible to God—all men equally beloved of God— 
all men equally entitled to the dignities of the sons of God— 
grant so much as this, and tyrants become intolerable, if not 
impossible. Even the French Revolution, though it proclaimed 
itself wholly atheistic, resulted from the simplicity of the fel- 
lowships in Palestine by which the Son of God, representing 
the Father among mankind, proved that God in very truth 
is no respecter of persons. And it is not merely tyrant monarchs 
and princes who have fallen before this mighty and divine 
fact. Every social injustice, every precedent of ill will that 
robs any human being of his right to life and light and cheer, 
must also succumb wherever men learn the absolute parity 
of all souls before the fatherly eye of God Almighty. Race 
prejudice and class antipathy can as little endure this truth 
about an impartial Creator as can the locking up of hard hearts 
in indifferent isolation from the trials and troubles of. fellow- 
men and the shutting of ears against claims of justice for the 
under-privileged. Who, having seriously bethought himself of 
this truth, dares part company with God? 

Quibbling such as that in which the Jewish lawyer sought 
to take refuge still shields many persons of timid or callous 
disposition from the full pressure of the Master’s insistence on 
increasing the world’s neighborliness to the maximum of every 
man a neighbor. Thus some would stop to debate how much 
it is rightful to love one’s self, with the seeming hope of dimin- 
ishing self-love until it can be weighed against a trifling equiv- 
alent of neighbor love. Others would interpose a puzzle about 
those rigorous duties laid on persons responsible for mainte- 
nance of the law—asking, for example, what a judge should do 


22 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


with a criminal before him for sentence; should he be as 
reluctant to pronounce a punishment as he would be to receive _ 
it? And still others, unable to escape from the sentimentalism 
which infects the very word “love” in this romance-writing 
and romance-reading age, ask how they can be expected to 
love people (close neighbors sometimes) whose personalities 
are marked by far more repulsive traits than lovable ones. But 
a calmer—and closer—acquaintance with the Bible should per- 
suade men and women that these artificialities do not touch 
the duty imposed by the second great commandment. The 
Gospel writers chose in the Greek a word for love that has 
nothing to do with congeniality or sentimentality either. The 
word points direct at what the Good Samaritan parable puts 
above all—the compassionate helpfulness which mingled pity 
and good will are ever ready to render to men in any state of 
need, regardless of their own quality and regardful only of 
their common sonship in God. It is a word of mercy—such 
mercy as God shows to the ignorant and erring. Punishment 
even God gives to them that need mercy and grants them mercy 
through their penalty. If the punishments which human gov- 
ernments provide are not also merciful, restoring the evil to 
better ways, it is there that the second commandment is vio- 
lated—not in the duties discharged by the trustee of authority 
when he keeps the Golden Rule by adjudging to another what 
he knows that he would himself deserve if he stood at the bar 
in like case. 

As for loving the unlovely, the truth is that the second com- 
mandment is not an injunction for a man to love his neighbor 
as he loves himself. None of the forms in which the com- 
mandment appears in the Scriptures say that at all. The word 
of command is, instead, that each of us must love his neighbor 
as being in body, mind, and soul identical with himself. Self is 
a poor object of love anyhow, and that would be a low standard 
of love which was centered upon self. God is always the meas- 
ure of that kind of love to which the Good Samaritan story 
incites us; in God are all love’s incentives and love’s patterns. 
The business for self is not the quantitative task of dividing love 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 23 


equally between self and neighbor; it is the qualitative matter 
of identifying self with neighbor and neighbor with self, of 
encompassing both with a single love. The conception is a 
demand on men to achieve a fully sensed visualization of the 
actual solidarity of humanity. It is putting the other man in 
the place of me, and me into the place of other man’s servant, 
yet being all the while at bottom other man also. 

This is a feat which the human race has never yet accom- 
plished; it would be truer to say that the human race has never 
even entertained the thought of attempting it. The whole de- 
velopment of human culture apart from Jesus Christ has grown 
from the roots of self-interest and self-regard. Ambitions for 
their own success and happiness have often required men to 
make their environment more auspicious, and to that end they 
have co-operated socially with those who could take benefit 
from what would also advantage them. Many efficient civiliz- 
ing movements have thus grown into great corporate power. 
But the main purpose of building a civilization that would do 
the other man better service and afford him finer opportunity 
is something which was never heard of in this world until Jesus 
Christ came—and has not been acted upon over-much since. 
Yet that is exactly the sort of thing which Christianity has set 
before men as their great goal—the superlative object in living. 
No wonder that Christianity, looked at closely, appears to be 
the most revolutionary proposition that ever entered the world. 

Yet Jesus thought it practicable. He not only taught it but 
lived it. “He went about doing good’”—this was the summary 
of what his friends best remembered of his everyday life. And 
the saying reveals that he really went about thinking not of 
himself but of the people around him, the people among whom 
he walked and worked. That paramount thought for others 
—that mental habit extraneous to himself—is the very hallmark 
of his personal religion. Perhaps the most dramatic thing he 
ever did in all his career of picturesque teaching was when 
he took a towel and girded himself and washed his disciples’ 
feet—a duty so menial that not one of them would perform it 
even for him. Yet he did not do this as playing a part; he 


24- AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


did the thing instinctive to his turn of mind. And it was on 
this occasion that he defined himself to them in what may be 
fairly considered his own clearest and simplest distillate of his 
own character: “I am in the midst of you as he that serveth.” 
And what is a servant? One who must think of others 
before he thinks of himself. The only respect in which Jesus 
did not fully bear out the servant’s part was that he was not 
obliged to put others before himself; he loved to do so. And 
in no age will his followers justly represent him to the world 
when they fail to acquire both his outside-himself way of 
thinking and his spontaneous pleasure in counting the other 
man first. 

The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew deserves re-reading with 
these observations in mind. The parable of judgment in that 
portion of the First Gospel is commonly taken as an awful 
warning to Christians against hard-heartedness; they are apt 
to find themselves among the goats of the parable if they do 
not have a care to soften their affections toward the troubled 
and the needy. But the story would seem rather less like a 
warning than like a lesson by example. It carries on to the 
verge of eternity this picture of the Christ who always thought 
of others and not of himself. The great point of the teaching 
would seem to be that the Son of Man sits on the throne of 
his glory not so much for judgment of the world’s derelictions 
as to assert the rights of the other man. At all events it is 
revealed that through all time—now and every day—an im- 
mortal friend is watching this earth to see how the other 
man is treated. Besides, it is plain that the sheep of this 
parable are not men and women who have at all planned their 
philanthropy with an eye to impressing the Judge favorably on ~ 
that tremendous Last Day; they are simply true folk whose 
hearts in all these are like the heart of Jesus, and who by that 
reason alone, innocent of design or forethought, have been serv- 
ing the other man just as Jesus would do. 

The second great commandment thus means vastly more than 
benevolence to the needy. It differs, in fact, utterly and irrec- 
oncilably from much of the public benevolence of modern life, 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 25 


that is often but a mirror of conceit in which the giver sees 
a flattering portrait of his own goodness reflected. The high 
estate of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self is not even ap- 
proached until the supposed virtue of setting aside one’s own 
interests in order to advance the interests of others has faded 
from the mind of the Christian disciple. One is treading the 
lofty ground of the second commandment only when one has 
climbed far enough to see that between one man and another 
in God’s commonwealth there are no antithetic interests: noth- 
ing can be inimical to one’s self that is good for anyone else; 
nor can what is right for another be a harm to one’s self. And 
this broad doctrine of common welfare or common harm for 
all alike—which is the inevitable corollary of any genuine 
Christlike identification of self with the rest of humanity—is 
manifestly not exhausted by the simpler mutualities that it 
creates between private persons. It governs just as potently 
the interdependence of great societies—races, nations, religions, 
and the more transient but often more immediately dynamic 
movements of political parties, industrial coalitions, and mili- 
tant social dogmatisms. 

How bitterly rage the wars, literal or symbolic, which are 
fought out between such forces under the illusion that one com- 
batant is destined to lose all that the other wins, or will be able 
to win all that the other loses! As long as this false sense pre- 
vails, of a world built so narrow that it cannot allow all men 
the freedom due to their own individuality, without harm accru- 
ing to the weak or distress reacting on the strong, humanity 
cannot hope to escape the constant recurrence of conflict and 
the steady augmentation of mankind’s burden of internecine 
hate. 

But the second great commandment waves over this field 
of contention as men’s best banner of hope. Jesus would not 
have said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”, if he 
had not well known that men could afford to obey the word 
—if he had not with his fullest heart of faith in the Father 
counted it as sure as the counsels of eternity that men could 
love their neighbors as themselves without disaster. In a world 


26 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


where the sole chance of survival lay with those who were able 
most successfully to devour their rivals it would have been 
mockery for him to have spoken at all of love; it would have 
been mockery for him or any other to be Christ. Christ came 
because the highest heavens wept to see man so desperately 
deluded and betrayed by his insane fear of his fellows—adopt- 
ing murder, swift or slow, to avert suicide. And if now at 
length, when there seems to be creeping over the lands a con- 
sciousness of the follies of the past such as has not before 
troubled the consciences of men or spoken to their penitence, 
there may be given from the Spirit of God to nations and 
peoples a new persuasion that Jesus was indeed the one true 
prophet of glad humanity, then “Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself’ may happily be in the end the sufficient platform 
of an ultimate league of the peoples. 

And not a league of the peoples alone, but the league of em- 
ployers and employed, the league of the rich and the poor, the 
league of the successful and the unsuccessful, the league of the 
strong and the weak, the league of the old and the young—yes, 
in the charity of men and the love of God, the league of the 
righteous and the sinful, and the league of the believing and the 
unbelieving! And all together would make up the league of a 
helpful world. 

The second great commandment is, however, more than a 
banner of hope for the penitent and the war-worn. It is also 
a guide-flag to adventure for the brave. The secular socialism 
of these times at its best would introduce social peace and 
brotherhood with compacts and guarantees, with laws and pro- 
cesses, with stipulations of responsibility and agencies of en- 
forcement—especially with a majority in power to uphold all 
these defences of a new régime. But the social order of Christ 
Jesus has naught to do with the rallying and alignment of ma- 
jorities. Social in all its aims, Christianity nevertheless begins 
with the individual soul. It is associational or collective individ- 
ualism. One man alive with the spirit of Jesus is enough any- 
where to set going this change in social order. Any faithful 
Christian can begin by himself loving his own neighbor. He 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 27 


may very likely need to live dangerously in order to fulfil his 
vision, but that will only make his hfe more powerful for the 
results to which it is dedicated. And he will be in glorious com- 
pany, for even so it was that Jesus both began and continued. 
The noble army of the martyrs also will be his cloud of wit- 
nesses. 


CTIAT 2 iets LL 


THE CHILD IN OUR DAY 


Tho responsibility of Christianity for childhood was laid down once and for 

all by Christ himself. And Christians have always accepted the ideal, even 

though they have too often failed to live up to it. With the failures we can- 

not be content; we must recognize our shortcomings, and we must contrive 
that the future of childhood will be brighter than its past. 


ESUS discovered the child. Yet can we forget the lovely 
and pathetic picture of the child on Andromache’s arm in 
the “Iliad”? And an old Japanese poem pities him, 

whom a little hand never takes by the cheek in order to turn 
his head to listen to the prattle of his small son. When the 
prophet Isaiah describes the new age his imagination runs free 
and prodigious. But nothing is like that word about the leopard 
and the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling dwell- 
ing together: “And a little child shall lead them.” ‘Thus the 
sorcery of the child is already foreshadowed in poetry. 

But the child had never been discovered as a child. It was 
regarded and appreciated only as a beginning: the male child 
was valued as a future man for the continuation of the family 
and the army. 

Before the Christian era the pride of parents centered in 
their sons. The Brahman said to the bride at her marriage: 
“Be the mother of strong sons.” But the birth of a daughter 
was considered a punishment for sins in earlier existences. ‘This 
prejudice was general. Girls were sometimes appreciated as 
an article of commerce; if marriageable they could procure for 
the father good payment. 

No nation has ever been more eager than Israel to become as 
numerous as the stars in the sky and as the dust of the earth. 


No curse can be heavier than that pronounced by Hosea: 
28 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION ao 


“There shall be no birth and none with child.” And no 
promise can be greater than that pronounced by Zachariah: 
“And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, play- 
ing in the streets thereof.” 

The originality of Jesus consists in the fact that he valued 
the child in itself. To him the child is interesting not because 
it will in the future grow up and fulfil a calling in society. 
That is of course very important. Martin Luther bowed when 
he entered a school because, he said, “here may be many mayors 
and principals.” But to Jesus the child meant an entire human 
being in itself. 

The Apostle Paul took another view. “When I was a child 
I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a 
child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.” 
Every age has its own virtues and ought to keep to them. <Ac- 
cording to the same Apostle men ought to be children not in 
mind: ‘“Howbeit in malice be ye babes, but in mind be men.” 

Jesus lived entirely in the present moment. The now was 
filled with eternity. He did not regret a golden age. Such an 
idea is Greek and ethnic, not biblical. Although he proclaimed 
the good tidings of God’s rule which shall break in over man- 
kind, his thoughts did not dwell on the future. Part of his 
originality is his concentration on the actual tasks of life, on 
the beauty and the events which appear in this very moment. 
He tells his friends not to be anxious for the morrow: “Suf- 
ficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” 

The child is valued by Jesus for its actual age, not for its 
transition to youth and manhood. Thus if a child dies, that 
is woful to near hearts, but according to the Christian idea 
it is not tragic, because the child as such has already fulfilled a 
calling. According to Jesus it will never in later life come 
nearer to God’s kingdom than during childhood. 

What a man does or what he does not has significance for 
Jesus as testimony of what he is in his inmost being. Jesus 
does not ask: What can you do, what have you done, what are 
you going to dor But simply: What are you in your heart?P 
He penetrates into the very essence of man in spite of human 


30 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


and too human anxiousness to seem to be what one isnot. Our 
modern Western civilization exaggerates the importance of 
what a man is able to make and produce instead of considering 
what he is. 

Jesus does not prize the child because of what it can or will 
be able to accomplish, but for what it is. 

The French clergyman Charles Wagner comprehended the 
sense of what Jesus said about children when he wrote so 
charmingly on “what those do who as yet do nothing”. 

Being means more in the child than doing. Jesus rejoices 
in the natural repose of a child in the actual moment. The 
child dares what grown-up people dare not, frightened as they 
are by troubles, occupied as they are by worldly cares: the 
child dares to be itself wholly and fully. It cannot be other- 
wise. This was a new view of children. They serve as the 
flowers serve, not through what they do, but through what they 
are. 

What then makes the child remarkable, beautiful, and model 
in the eyes of Jesus? Let us ask what Jesus denounced and con- 
demned most harshly: untruth, hypocrisy, pretence with its 
pride and hardness of heart. In children Jesus perceived a 
natural simplicity, a humble and trustful sincerity which made 
them fit for God’s Kingdom and an example to grown-up people. 
The story of the little children brought unto him proves that 
Jesus was charmed already by the sweet and unconscious grace 
of babies. Paul Leseur calls children “the most influential 
teachers, the source of purest joy, the incarnation of form, 
color, and grace.” Jesus loved children and flowers. Their 
fresh spontaneity and unaffectedness was more eloquent to him 
than intricate rules and the rhetorical sermons of piety. 

He saw in the child a natural teacher in humility, in sincerity, 
in loveliness and affection. 

He found the time spent with children well spent. What 
older sophisticated people regarded as very important was ex- 
posed by Jesus as empty nothingness, while the thought of chil- 
dren was appreciated. 

For children, if they are genuine, can have a simple and 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 31 


straightforward look on life and things. The eyes of the child 
can see a glimpse of God’s city, which is hidden by fog from 
the sight of grown-up people. The child has not as yet learnt 
to entangle things. In human society and social life there is a 
hopeless mixture of truth and untruth. The power of custom, 
the tangled skein of good and bad in conventionalism, and 
the complicated ways of human life blunt the keen sense of 
right and wrong, of purity and defilement. Children do not 
understand the respect of grown-up people for the argument 
that runs: It is the custom; it has ever been that way. Usage 
and laziness of the soul make older people resign themselves 
to absurdities which cannot fail to revolt the unspoiled sense 
of a child. Nothing is more painful than to witness a pure- 
hearted child making its first discovery of wrong things in life. 
The grown-up thinks all is not right, but what has always been 
he cannot alter. Christ never resigned himself to the absurdi- 
ties of society and human life. He reacted to them with equal 
spontaneity all through his life. Such an incorrigible single- 
ness of purpose is often called childish and naive. Jesus calls 
it the salt of the earth. 

In Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the emperor’s new 
dress the spectators surpass each other in praising its mag- 
nificence, until a little child looks at him and says the brutal 
truth: He is naked; he has no clothes at all. Therefore the 
truth-teller is called ’enfant terrible. The child is a help, an 
unequalled help, to keep the moral atmosphere fresh and clear 
in the home and in human society. Bret Harte and other 
authors have described the wonderful effect a child by its mere 
existence has even on men who seem ordinarily rough and 
hardened. 

A child can also look through sophism and tell the truth. 
There is the story of the little boy who asked: “Why doesn’t 
God kill the Devil?” The eternal problem cannot be stated in 
a more acute form. Even such a comprehensive mind as Plato 
recognized it in his dualism, and such a rationalistic soberness 
as that of Immanuel Kant could not get rid of the “radical 
wrong”. On the very problem of life the child gave a short and 


d2 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


clear-cut question which the great scholar was not able to 
answer. 

Or take another dark challenge to human thought. In the 
beginning of the World War a little boy made the laconic ob- 
servation: ‘Why do they have war? They die anyhow.” 

The twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple is often wrongly 
regarded as a prodigy. A child can ask and answer more than 
an adult is able to answer or to imagine. The imagination of 
the child can get a concrete vision of what the adult can only 
dimly surmise. Take the secret of God’s communion with 
men. How can Jesus hear the voice of his heavenly Father? 
God does not speak and is not heard by us as are men. There 
is a picture on the wall of Beethoven playing, his hands on the 
keyboard; but no music is seen on the stand, and he is looking 
vaguely towards the spectator. The little boy knew: “When 
Jesus heard the voice of God it was like Beethoven hearing the 
music in his head.” 

It is easy to multiply such episodes in proving the role of 
children as teachers.in the Christian family. But it is aston- 
ishing that such a virtue in childhood was not discovered before 
Jesus. 

It does not follow that the child is for Christianity a perfect 
being. No, he carries in his heritage from bygone generations 
dark moods as well as good gifts. Paul’s doctrine of the tragic 
transmission of sin from generation to generation is repugnant 
but exact. 

But Jesus found in the genuine mind of a child qualities 
that age, as a rule, loses,—a heavy payment for the experi- 
ence of life. The angels of the little ones behold the face of the 
Father in heaven. The pure in heart shall see God. 

_ Jesus applied his doctrine of human life’s great sacredness 

not only to the adult but also to children. And because the 
human soul as such has an eternal value, no difference is made 
between men and women, and among children as little as among > 
adults. ‘The Gospel has a story of the daughter of Jairus as 
well as of the son of the widow of Nain, and in that last story 
4a woman, the widow, is the chief personage. 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 33 


Exposure of children is common before and outside biblical 
religion. Amongst primitive tribes but also in the great 
civilizations the process is often made more rapid through 
drowning, or strangling, or other methods. The grounds are 
manifold: deformity; the superstitious fear of twins (one or both 
being killed) ; birth outside wedlock; place of the sacrifice of 
children in the sacred rites; economic reasons such as a threat- 
ening famine or simply.the desire for ease and comfort; and 
above all the simple arbitrariness of father, mother, or other 
relatives of the child. , 

Girls were usually exposed or killed; but in the sacrificial 
rites boys were preferred because to appease deity required the 
most precious gift. 

The revolution operated by Christianity was slow. Church 
Fathers stigmatized exposure of children as murder. The 
Church took care of exposed children, tried to find adoptive 
parents for them without discriminating between children born 
in or outside marriage. By helping poor parents the Church 
tried to diminish the temptation for infant murder. The oldest 
home for foundlings is said to have been established in 787 
by the Archpriest of Milan. 

Christianity recognized the duty of protecting the child be- 
fore its birth. Rudolph Kittel has shown how the divine child 
which should introduce a new age was expected in Egypt and 
Persia, India and Greece, and elsewhere, and was worshipped 
long before Christmas took the place of such myths and rites. 
But the Gospel narrative gave to the child and its mother a 
more human character and humanized general opinion. The 
difference was the same as between the many divine saviors 
or lords and the Savior and Lord Christ. They were only 
gods. He was man. The young mother coming with Joseph 
to Bethlehem, giving birth to the child in a manger, wakened 
tender feelings. Nothing is more beautiful to human eyes on 
our earth than the mother with her child. The Christmas 
narrative and the religious customs belonging to it have led 


mankind to care for and protect the unborn and the new-born 
child. 


34 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


There was no room for them in the inn. That is true, alas, 
of millions of children today. 

In our days the child sometimes renders it impossible for 
father and mother to find a dwelling. In a so-called Christian 
civilization the child, especially if it has sisters and brothers, 
must grow up in the poorest lodgings, in the most unhealthy 
and draughty rooms, and in the most filthy surroundings of a 
city. Their parents and themselves are condemned to be farther 
from workshop, playgrounds, schools, church, and desirable 
associations in general. 

We cannot speak of the position of children in the family 
without touching one of the worst of their hardships in modern 
society. No chapter in our so-called Christian civilization is 
less Christian than the record of child labor—a sacrifice to the 
greed of impersonal wealth. 

The Moloch cult is not a thing of the past. If the home 
is a miserable and unhealthy nest, if the mother must go to 
work in the factory, and if the children are condemned to earn 
money by work in factories in too early years, it is useless to 
speak of the position of children in the family. 

The child has also the right to be equipped with every useful 
knowledge and training that will help it to keep soul and 
body fresh and to develop its possibilities. It must be accus- 
tomed to order, industry, and honesty. Every class in society 
is now, at least in principle, provided with leisure for enjoying 
education. 

Compulsory schooling has been introduced in every State 
which has a legitimate right to be reckoned part of Western 
culture. But there are still in the Old and in the New World 
larger or smaller regions where illiteracy not only exists, but 
where the illiterates are in the majority. 

The compulsory school system involves the question of sup- 
plying deficiencies in clothing and food. For even the best of 
teaching is humbug and grim irony if given to under-nourished 
children without enough to wear. But this problem involves 
another : personal responsibility of the parents for the well-being 
of the children. 


) 


# a tillaai % 


From the Painting by Dorothy Stanley 
HIS FIRST OFFENCE 








THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 35 


In its intellectual and bodily training we must not overlook 
the fact that the child is before all a spiritual and moral being. 
Man is born once from his mother’s womb to the animal life, 
to cry, eat, drink, and die and moulder in the dust. So far 
he is only a prominent species of mammal, though capable 
through science and technical skill of commanding nature and 
forcing the elements into his service. 

When in primitive tribes the boys are brought out to the 
bush, frightened, deafened, circumcised, and subjected to other 
queer ceremonies belonging to the initiation into the mysteries 
of the tribe, that is sometimes called a New Birth. The boys 
are said to be “born anew.” The Brahmans in India boast 
that they are born twice, unlike other men, who like the animals 
are born only once. 

The present writer once baptized a little boy who could 
already run. He afterwards said to his playmate, a dog: “You 
can’t be baptized, you can’t!” He hit the mark. The capacity 
for baptism marks the difference between animal and man— 
the rebirth to the spiritual world. No one can say when the 
first dim understanding of right and wrong, of beauty and 
truth, and of the divine arises in the soul of the child. Baptism 
means, according to St. Matthew, a pledge. The family and 
the Church, in baptizing the child, give a solemn promise to 
teach it to observe all things whatsoever Christ commands. 

Christianity has thrown a revealing light upon a treatment 
of children which constitutes a shame to Western civilization 
but which would not revolt the minds of a non-Christian world. 
For Christianity has in’ fact ameliorated the condition of chil- 
dren to an extent which we do not realize. Many things 
which seem to us self-evident were revolutionary when Jesus 
proclaimed them. 


CHAPTER. TED 


WOMAN’S NEW PLACE IN THE WORLD 


“In Christ there is neither male nor female.’ These words of the great A postle 
Paul proclaimed a principle that has found a startlingly rapid realization within 
our own generation. What still remains to be done in this regard? 

HE human heart has not yet succeeded in understanding 
or attaining to any appreciable part of the purpose of 
creation for either man or woman, but our neglect of the 
obvious design becomes an increasing wonder as we look 
back over history. Our age will be thought of as the age in 
which the human race had begun, in a fresh sense, to be con- 
scious of its division into two equally balanced and normal 
halves. With due respect, one for the other, we are asking 
ourselves what is the special intellectual and spiritual purpose 
of this division, as well as the obvious physical one of repro- 
ducing and nurturing the generations. We no longer think in 
terms of a “woman problem” any more than a “man problem”. 
The race has always been a problem to itself, and we realize 
with Benjamin Kidd that “the central problem is the relation 
of woman not to man, but to the needs of society.” 7 
We can think of no age of woman apart from an age of chil- 
dren. The child is the eternal wonder and miracle of the world. 
And the laws by which the child has its being are part of that 
miracle. Love is the cohesive force of our spiritual as well as of 
our physical existence. Every function of our bodies and our 
minds is today being re-appraised by thinkers in the light of 
each fresh access of responsibility towards the child; and the 
struggle of woman for freedom and development, so often mis- 
understood as self-assertion, is in reality a fresh and mighty 
effort of nature to bring the race to a higher level of life. The 
36 


From the Painting by Marie-Anne Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun 
MME. VIGEE-LEBRUN AND HER DAUGHTER 








EDITH CAVELL 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 37 


child cannot develop unless its mother has developed first. The 
bodies, the minds, the spirits of a generation rise in proportion 
to the level of their source. We have misunderstood and de- 
based the urge of life through which new creation comes; ac- 
cordingly, the development of woman has been retarded. What 
we now see is that to deny to woman her opportunity as a 
rational creature is to retard not woman alone but the race. 

Only as we study and obey in its highest implications the 
laws of life and the love it creates, as well as the effects of 
this love on our individual lives, our families, and our whole 
social structure, can we escape from our present bondage into 
liberty. The record is clear in history, philosophy, and litera- 
ture. Races and religions can be rated in exact proportion to 
the place they give to woman, and Jesus Christ alone lifted 
her to the place God meant her to have. He struck off the 
shackles of lust, and he put marriage and the institution of 
the home in its rightful place. When an attempt was made 
to lead him into some statement condoning lax and selfish 
relationships under cover of legalized divorce, he proclaimed 
again God’s purpose in the beginning of creation and strength- 
ened it with a solemn statement of the divine sanction of mar- 
riage and its enduring spiritual quality. When his disciples in 
their dullness sent little children away he was indignant and 
said again what he had said before: that the whole secret of 
the lesson he was trying to teach them lay in the heart of a 
child, the child of which love was the creator. 


I 


The burden laid upon woman by social or religious customs 
that emphasize only physical functions and attractions is heavy. 
Jean Mackenzie, writing with intimate knowledge of primitive 
people, says that the women of the African forests can never 
be together long without talking of the “sorrows of women”. 
Chattels and beasts of burden, their spirits reach out beyond 
their enslavement, and the discrepancy between their living and 
their longing becomes their woe. Held like the Trojan women 


38 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


by physical subjection in the ‘“‘chain of things that be”, they 
cry, with Hecuba: 

Lo, I have seen the open hand of God 

And in it nothing, nothing, save the rod 

Of mine affliction. 

It was the logical results of Mohammed’s theories about 
women that led a Moslem woman to say to a Christian visitor 
to Persia a few years ago, “Your prophet did well for your 
women.” And Rudyard Kipling is right about the problems of 
India when he declares that they are not to be healed by political 
cures alone, because they are due in such large measure to 
the unnatural treatment of women, native habits and beliefs 
being a conspiracy against the laws of health and happy living. 
When a nation, as he says, withholds from its women education 
and the treatment due to rational human beings, half of that 
nation becomes morally dead—the half from which it has the 
right to look for its best impulses. 

The great literature of centuries shows in its mirror women 
and girls caught in a vise between tradition and the lordship 
of physical power, from Vashti and Esther on through the years. 
What chance had Juliet? Who put out a hand to save poor 
little Desdemona from her maddened husband? It took her 
murder to release Emilia from the necessity of obedience to 
Tago: “Tis proper I obey you, but not now.” The little 
girl-bride, Francesca, in the palace of Rimini, is shut in with 
tragedy like a rabbit thrown to feed a snake, and Robert 
Browning is at his greatest as prophet of a new age and reader 
of the human soul when he shows us his Pompilia breaking 
from her prison-tyranny, to save the body and soul of her 
child, untouched by the mire into which she had been flung, 
and drawing from the New Testament the perfect theory of 
marriage—although her own had brought betrayal: 

Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, 
Mere imitation of the inimitable. 

Be as the angels rather, who apart, 

Know themselves into one, are found at length 
Married, but marry never; no, nor given 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 39 


In marriage; they are man and wife at once 
When the true time is. 

“Not even the soul lives for itself, and the body’s last ex- 
pression of the soul’s self-giving must be withheld until the 
soul is ripe for the marriage of true minds which ought to 
precede the carnal consummation.” Nature says to the body, 
“wait for the soul”; and the body must be dead to its most 
intimate instinct until the soul’s fullness of time. So speaks 
William Blake’s best interpreter, seeing, as Pompilia saw, that 
spiritual unity must precede physical union. 

The infiltration of the teachings of Christ has been slow in 
all the aspects of life, and the inner recesses of the spirit are 
the last to yield to it openly. But there can be no cure for the 
world’s woes until these deepest implications are faced and 
accepted and human relationships lifted to the place which his 
teaching would assign them. It is not enough to give up cruelty, 
it is not enough to end wars, to be honest in the market place 
and righteous in our governments. We must think of our 
bodies as the temples of the Holy Ghost, of marriage as a 
sacrament renewed in every touch, of our right to beget and 
bear new human life,—each life a fresh emergence into the 
world of his spirit,—as the deepest and holiest of human re- 
sponsibilities, to be controlled as other life-currents should be 
controlled by that self-discipline and obedience to the highest 
which together constitute holiness, 


II 


The energies of women, until freed by the invention of 
machinery from the distaff, the spinning-wheel, the churn, and 
the needle, had to be applied almost entirely to the technique 
of living, the necessity for clothing, food, and physical comforts. 
Even the most privileged class of women rarely had leisure, 
and their leisure still more rarely brought educational 
advantage. 

It is within the memory of women now living that water has 
been piped to our houses, community drainage installed, central 


40 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


heating put into our homes, with hot water always available 
for the cleansing of clothes and bodies. The majority of the 
mothers in those past generations made their soap, carried and 
heated their water, moulded their candles, spun both their wool 
and linen, put up their fruits and vegetables for winter use, and 
knitted for their households stockings, mittens, and warm under- 
garments. Many family treasure chests today hold men’s linen 
shirts, made less than seventy years ago, on which the exqui- 
site hand stitching done by a busy wife equals in its exactness 
and regularity the stitch of a machine; and she made not one 
but many such garments. 

To call in a nurse in illness was for most family units both 
unthought of and impossible. To go out and buy, at a moment’s 
notice, food in'tin or glass, fresh fruit from the tropics, meat 
grown and killed half a continent away, and bread fresh-baked 
and clean, would have seemed as wild a stretch of the imagina- 
tion as the aeroplane and the radio. Today the average house- 
wife undoubtedly has several hours each day released to her 
by such novel devices as piped water, the sewing machine, 
prepared foods and ready-made clothing. And this was true 
before vacuum-cleaners and electric washers came into use, so 
that our wonder grows at our grandmothers’ ability to keep their 
world going on twenty-four hours a day. Yet the household 
revolution effected through the use of mechanical energy has 
hardly begun. 

Until flint and tinder were employed—and much later, 
matches—women were the guardians of the flame on the hearth, 
the central necessity of life. In the damp and cold of the West 
Highlands the time has not yet been forgotten when, if the fires 
were allowed to go out, someone had to walk six or eight miles 
to the next croft to get burning-peat and rekindle it. It is the 
racial memory of these primitive necessities that makes some 
timid minds fearful today when they see woman moving out 
into the world’s larger life, even to the comic extreme of stating 
that “her place is not more than twenty feet from the kitchen 
stove.” 

If women in the recent past were tied to those duties of the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 41 


daily round that kept them within the walls of their homes, 
it was their privilege to create within those walls many of the 
sanctities of the home and much of its comfort and peace, while 
the outer aspects of security were the business of men. It is to 
women’s credit that men in general do not yet understand the 
cost of these quiet processes in the home and their creative 
quality, with the effort involved in the care of little children 
—that they think when they go out in the morning they are 
leaving their women to a life free from friction and strain. As 
women begin to understand something of men’s struggle in the 
outside world, so, too, perhaps men will estimate more accu- 
rately this atmosphere of the home. Detailed knowledge of one 
another’s specialized work may be neither possible nor desir- 
able, but an understanding of basic principles must put partner- 
ship on a firmer foundation. A woman’s work is meant to be 
the leaven hid in the meal; and just as science is discovering 
that leaven holds the invisible but essential vitamine, so our 
modern consciousness is beginning to show a new respect for 
those instinctive and often invisible processes that have been 
woman’s share in life’s division of labor. 

The new tools put into woman’s hands, by relieving her from 
some of the heavier daily tasks, have changed the aspect of 
her life, and one of the problems facing her is the right use of 
her new leisure. 


III 


Fuller opportunity for women, in the realm of business, 
science, civics, and the Church, means a better circulation of 
blood in our complex human system—a better basis for partner- 
ship. Women go out into business and learn its laws; they 
return and bring new system and order into the home, re- 
leasing energy for larger service. They go into the world of 
science, and they bring back new understanding of the laws of 
health, ministering to human life and raising its level. They 
study psychology, and they apply it judiciously and reverently 
to the unfolding minds of little children, to the end that in- 


42 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


hibitions may be done away with and maladjustments cease. 
A woman of the last century rarely thought freely and naturally 
in terms of citizenship, for its privileges and responsibilities 
were denied her; like a Chinese woman with bound feet, a 
part of her life was atrophied. But the modern educated girl 
sees life as a whole; she knows that laws of cleanliness and 
health are the same for a city as for a single home; she knows 
that laws of justice and good will are the same for nations 
as for families. For her political science loses its mystery, and 
the home—always the microcosm of human society—becomes 
in the truest sense the matrix of those nobler races whose 
creation is in the mind of God. Women become more truly 
co-workers with Him in a still unfinished heaven and earth. 

It is for woman, in these new phases of life, to re-value herself, 
to see her body as servant to her mind, and to make both body 
and mind subservient to her spirit. She must realize the pres- 
ence of God in every aspect of her life, using all her higher 
powers as a channel for His life. Her self-discipline and dignity 
must equal her new leisure and liberty. The new things within 
her reach, and the still larger things towards which she leads 
the children of the future, have always been inherent in the life 
and teaching of Jesus Christ. But we have neglected them and 
passed them by. It is for the woman of today and tomorrow to 
release the energies God has given her by nature, through a new 
and intensive study of love in its widest and most intelligent 
application. 

God made love natural and easy in the close relationship of 
the family, whenever husband and wife have chosen one another 
with recognition of the spiritual aspect of their relationship, 
or where companionship has been consecrated to the perfection 
of spiritual equipment. The children of such a union are not 
handicapped in life’s race. In such homes the law of love can 
be studied and applied until nations are included in its work- 
ing. Even the centuries of honor to the Virgin of whom the 
Son of God was born have not yet sufficiently revealed our 
debt to her whose household ways moulded Christ’s early 
thinking, whose womanly habits of thrift and skill are reflected 


THONV NVIGUVOSD AHL 


IR VGAG &q buijuiwg ay 








THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION —— 43 


in many of his parables, and whose reverence turned his mind 
to God. 

Woman’s chief perplexity is the right choice of emphasis 
in our complex world. It is true that even the measure of 
escape from the treadmill of daily duties does not free women 
from unceasing attention to minute detail. They cannot escape 
detail any more than the earth’s atmosphere can escape the 
“dust in suspension” that fills it everywhere. 

It is ‘the business of being a woman” to blend the detail of 
living into something lovely and harmonious; and the right 
development of woman will not take her away from her special 
function nor lead her to ignore it. Nature—or God—has taken 
care of that. She will see new meaning in it and turn to it 
with fresh zest. Woman asks only the training that will enable 
her to do with her fullest powers her full part in the world. 
The world needs her latent energies. She has made bricks, but 
often without straw. She asks that the law of the spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus should make her free from the law of sin and 
death as it works in false traditions and mistaken thinking. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE TREND OF FAMILY LIFE 


While every change in civilization has effected an alteration of the conception 

of the family, the changes that are taking place today seem in many quarters 

to threaten the very existence of the home. Much of the alarm, no doubt, is 

needless, and yet no one can fail to perceive the need of a thorough examination 
of prevalent conditions. 

ESUS in his ministry drew for illustration on his wealth 

of observation of the daily life of the humble home to 


which during thirty years he had given loving allegiance. 
Within the family and the circle of neighbors he had come 
into intimate relationship with men and women. He knew that 
each had an equal value in his Father’s eyes. The little children 
who gathered about him in his own home and in the homes of 
his relatives and friends were tenderly cherished. In their eyes 
he read his Father’s will that every human life should be pre- 
served because each human life was sacred. The little child 
held, because of the purity of its heart and the poverty of its 
spirit, treasures which were needful for the ultimate salvation 
of the child grown man: the child becomes the builder of a 
new home. 

The apostolic Church triumphantly put into practice the 
crystal-clear lessons Jesus taught as to the worth and dignity 
of family life irrespective of caste or social status; as to the 
equal value of men and women; as to the sanctity of child 
life; as to the fundamental requirement that purity be assured 
through continence in thought; as to the duty of holding pos- 
sessions as a trust. Men and women shared as equals the re- 
sponsibilities of their wedded life. The slave became in the 
intimacy of the life of the early Church a true brother in 


Christ of the freedman. They both were fellow-servants of 
44 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 45 


their common Lord and Master. The stability of the family 
was interpreted in the light of the revelation of the early days 
of the Christian era as dependent neither on possessions nor 
on conformity to worldly usage, but on obedience to God’s 
will as Christ had made it known. 

Prior to the beginnimg of the Christian era the austere char- 
acter of the family life of the early Roman Republic had 
yielded to the debasing influence of the expanding empire. The 
patriarchal family, with its ideal of the purity of the wife and 
mother and the unquestioned authority of the husband and 
father, had been undermined by the demoralization which came 
in part as a result of the accessions of wealth through conquest 
and the subsequent lavish expenditures of the newly rich. The 
rights that women had secured to manage property held in their 
own name and to exercise greater freedom of conduct were 
offset by their effort to wrest personal satisfaction out of their 
comparative independence. The bondage of the home was 
loosened without the Roman matron’s appreciation of the op- 
portunity the new liberty of action gave her for the enrichment 
of her influence within the home itself. 

Early Christian practice had to stand the impact of Greek 
and Roman as well as Hebraic codes and customs. It had 
to face its own conflicting teachings; first, as to the relative 
value of the celibate and the marital state and, second, as to 
the questioned importance of home-building in a world whose 
early end was anticipated. It was shortly to be subjected to 
the terrific inrush of Teutonic customs and the Teutonic re: 
imposition of the autocracy of the husband and father. 

The medieval epoch offered compromises. The effort was 
made to maintain the principle of purity through the celibacy 
of the few and to extol human love through the art of the 
wandering minstrel. A selected womanhood was given a ped- 
estal. The assumption was that while she stood upon it the 
purity of the home was assured. Other women, alleged to be 
necessary, could through the exercise of their malevolent func- 
tion become, it was paradoxically claimed, at once “the supreme 
type of vice” and “the efficient guardian” of the matron’s virtue. 


46 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


They, rather than the man of the household, were to guarantee 
the moral integrity of the home. He alone held the right to 
determine on what terms the moral claims of family life were 
to be met. 

The Reformation period ruthlessly exposed the venal char- 
acter of much of the so-called celibate life of the pre-Reforma- 
tion Church. Sceptical of the value of celibacy, the reformer 
was disposed to consider that marriage should be recognized 
as a civil contract rather than as a sacramental act. He further- 
more, in the process of attacking authority as he saw it exer- 
cised by the Church, laid a groundwork for the development 
of the social recognition of the individual. 

An unexpected sequel to Reformation history was offered 
when the industrial revolution, many decades later, began to 
take women and children out of their homes, thereby shifting 
their labor from hearth and farm to factory and mill. The 
exploitation of this cheap labor ran a dark and devastating 
course before it enlisted the chivalry of the statesmen, who 
began the slow process of correcting abuse through legislative 
enactment and enforcement. The unanticipated and significant 
by-product of the industrial revolution was that it gave women 
and youth on a large scale an appreciation of what freedom 
of action through wage-earning might secure. They began 
to weigh the difference between working within and without 
the confines of the home. Even though from a social point of 
view the disadvantages were greater than the advantages so 
long as exploitation remained unchecked, the new opportunity 
of wage-earning convinced them that their independence was 
greater when they were paid in cash for services rendered. 

A second result of transformation in methods of production, 
and another factor which led to change of attitude towards 
the home, was the sharp contrast offered by the exploitation 
of the individual at one side of the social stage and the develop- 
ment of the parasite at the opposite side. The victims of the 
new oppression and the new leisure were seen to press in upon 
family life, as it were from the wings, and each threaten to 
fill the center of the stage. ‘The broad expanse occupied by 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 47 


stable families seemed to contract. Their space was impinged 
on by the victims or the votaries of shifting standards of living. 
Those who had been the stable rather than those who had been 
the impoverished or the parasitic became the butt of the 
satirist. The imponderable influences within the home con- 
ditioning its quality were not held in mind. The eyes which 
were riveted on the maladjustments in the homes of rich and 
poor lost the vision of the sustaining attributes of family life 
which give ordinary human beings the courage to live and to 
perpetuate their kind. 

The revival of folk-songs and dances made possible through 
drawing on isolated communities to share their inherited family 
culture with the modern world, and the use made by the 
social settlements of the skill in handicraft of the peasant im- 
migrant, are instances of a recognition of the present importance 
of stimulating appreciation of home culture and skill. 

The assumption by the State of responsibility for the en- 
forcement of laws to regulate labor and schooling is a third 
factor which has played an important part in changing the 
relationship of members within the family group. The ex- 
ploitation of women and children in industry made such inter- 
vention necessary. State intervention has in the main drawn 
on the constructive genius of socially-minded citizens for the 
making of laws. But when the State, in order that it may 
protect the weaker members of the family, imposes prohibitions, 
its limits the family’s freedom of choice and action. The State, 
in place of the home or the Church, asserts the right of direct- 
ing the education and of regulating the conditions of labor for 
the oncoming generation.” The rights of the individual are put 
first. His interests as a member of society rather than of a 
family are furthered. Social student and legislator have been 
apt to work for the relief of the individual as an individual 
rather than as a component part of a social unit. The reaction 
of member on member within the intimate circle of the home 
has been made the subject of close scrutiny by economist and 
by psychologist as well as by public and private social agencies. 

What it costs both in money and in effort to enforce a State’s 


48 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


legislative programme is being gauged with growing accuracy. 
What is not being measured is the actual effect on family life 
of State intervention. Scales have not as yet been invented 
which can balance with approximate precision the social losses 
with the unquestionable social gains. 

The revelation of what a double standard of morality has 
entailed is another and peculiarly sinister factor in changing 
relationships. Women’s participation in industry outside the 
home, and her admission to the hospital, first as nurse and then 
as physician, and to the court as probation officer, have ac- 
quainted her with the consequences of prostitution. 

The new psychology has carried further the process of 
emphasizing the baneful results to the family of anti-social be- 
havior. It has developed its own means of alleged escape from 
the effects of warped and sinful ways of living. The divorce 
court has been increasingly used as a method of quick redress, 
as well as of release from the consequences of having made an 
uncongenial or a sensual choice in marriage. Divorce of itself 
is, however, not a cause but rather the symptom of an age-old 
disorder. The apparent breakdown of morality in the middle- 
aged, which brings so many modern married couples into the 
divorce court, merely makes public the failure of discipline to 
establish early in life habits of self-control. 

Realizing at last the extent to which men have supported 
prostitution, some women have become careless of their virtue. 
The knowledge has caused others to be inflexibly intolerant in 
spite of the greater strain which resistance to passion imposes 
on the continence of men. Women have not been prepared to 
recognize the folk-wisdom which has been inherent in a double 
standard of morality. Women should be maternal enough to 
fill the creative role they seem destined to play in the stu- 
pendous fight of the race to attain sexual purity. With pro- 
found charity, now that their sight is cleared, they must help 
men to attain, if need be more slowly than they themselves, the 
standard Jesus himself set. 

The fiber of family life is tough. The long and varied history 
of the family in civilization attests the irrefutable fact. It 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 49 


makes a unique and essential contribution in spite of economic 
and psychological changes, of shifts in custom, of the exercise 
of State control, and of the lessened authority of the husband 
and father—in spite, moreover, of the drift from country to 
city, of the increase of means of transportation, and of oppor- 
tunities for mass recreation. Its permanence as a social insti- 
tution is proved by its power of rebound. Sociological studies 
like those of the Frenchman Peter Le Play are not needed as 
evidence that a sound organization of family life is fundamental 
to a nation’s well-being. Utopian experiments in communal 
living have demonstrated, in spite of the theories of their pro- 
moters, that the social unit, the family, is the requisite under- 
pinning of the State, that without the family in operation there 
is no propelling motive to insure the welfare of successive gen- 
erations. The individual is never more wholly himself than 
when he voluntarily yields his individualism in behalf not 
of the tyrannies or whims, but of the integrity of the family. 
In such process of integration the personality of each member 
develops. Through development of personality the true func- 
tion of the family is realized. The inner liberty of its members 
is assured, and power is generated which can cope with un- 
toward circumstances. 

A different temper actuates the conduct of the youthful mem- 
bers of the family in periods of social transition. Conservatism 
is then under suspicion. The reforming spirit is in the 
ascendant. The young, bent on testing their power as indi- 
viduals, deny the right of the older generation to exercise 
authority over them. They even question the disinterestedness 
of the motives which lead their elders to resist their efforts to 
break “the cake of custom”. 

The young people of the present day also often feel their 
parents’ inability effectively to meet novel situations. These 
psychologically alert young people realize that their parents 
often balk at exercising authority because they shirk the re- 
sponsibility of fathoming the wants of their intensely individual 
children. ‘The parents’ failure to attempt to exert influence is 
often, however, the result of fear on their part lest they should 


50 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


repeat the mistakes of the discredited methods of discipline of 
their own forbears. 

There is, however, a deeper reason for questioning the ad- 
visability of exerting parental authority. It lies in the belief 
that right relationships are established within the family, be- 
tween parent and child as well as between husband and wife, 
through spontaneous allegiance. New ways of enriching and 
ennobling old institutions are learned, as wise men and women 
know, through a process of trial and error. 

Experience in dealing with broken families leads one to 
appreciate that the structure of the family defies sapping. 
Broadly speaking, the neglected child, in spite of the failure 
of its home to protect it, yearns soon or late to return to its 
own people, broken though the hearth may have been when it 
was taken away. ‘The homeless man looks back with longing 
to the one place which would have “to take” him “in” because 
in it he was born, and which, because it is his birthright, he 
“somehow” does not have “to deserve”. The mother of the 
illegitimate child, even though she be cruelly disillusioned, finds 
that her own life attains meaning as she stands ready to lose 
it in behalf of her child’s life, and as she labors to secure for 
the child a home which shall be their mutual anchorage. 
Interdependence, which the social worker has tried to stimulate 
in bringing fragments of families together, has been found to 
be inherent in the nature of family life and necessary to social 
growth. In seeking to develop interdependence through work 
in behalf of isolated men, women, and children, the lesson has 
been learned that unless the art of human relationship be ac- 
quired within the home, no practice of socially sound behavior 
can be counted on from neighbor or citizen. 

The family used to be considered competent only if within 
the home were carried on the traditional methods of feeding 
and clothing its members. Ownership of land and goods were 
deemed essential to its stability. But the family has become 
more, not less of a social asset as it has been relieved from the 
duty of baking its own bread and making its own clothes, of 
nursing its own sick, of giving vocational training to the next 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 51 


generation. Free from these preoccupations, the man and the 
woman now have scope as never before for the development 
of personality. As equals each can begin to make distinctive 
contribution to the home and together to guide the training 
of the child as a unique being. Their mutual task has a nation- 
wide significance. Each family is a unit in a community of 
families. The several members of each unit are not alone 
dependent, inevitably and unceasingly, upon one another, but 
upon the members of every other unit. Each family group helps 
to build up or to pull down every other family group whether 
the other be rich or poor or be situated in city, town, or open 
country. 

The principle of the equal value of each human being in 
the sight of God is accepted to a greater degree than ever 
before in history. Never before has the family been so well 
equipped to achieve its true end. 

Family life, seen in terms of its trend in history, is a symbol. 
The ground for its perpetuity is that it may serve an end 
which lies outside of itself. That end is to build within the 
world citizens for the Kingdom of Heaven, which is at hand. 
The achieving of that end cannot be delegated. No institution 
of the State nor of the community, neither the school nor the 
Church, can relieve the family of that primary privilege and 
responsibility. The Church itself must depend on the family 
to take the initial steps. For the family alone can maintain 
the altar on the hearth. Upon the hearth, in the loving intimacy 
of the family circle, religion must be cultivated, so that it may 
become a source of action. 

St. Francis of Assisi has a message to deliver to the young 
men and the young women at the beginning of the second 
quarter of the twentieth century. His love of God, his de- 
tachment from the tyranny of possessions, his chivalry to Christ 
evidenced by his audacity in living in a manner foreign to the 
world’s way, this in his day held the attention of his fellow- 
men, gave them an ideal. Their minds were diverted from 
the heresies which threatened the life of the Church at the 
beginning of the thirteenth century. For them the Church 


52 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


was salted with anew savor. They saw it carried into the homes 
of the people. That message of St. Francis to the youth of 
today repeats the lesson he taught seven centuries ago. It 
proclaims that the Church must again be at home on the hearths 
of the people, that Christ, as once at Emmaus, must sit at meat 
with his own. 











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cher 





Jane Austen 





Bee 


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Har 


5 


Elizabeth Barrett Browning 


Charlotte Bean 





FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 





BOOK II 


THE COMMUNITY 


Our relations to the community inevitably create a host of 
responsibilities of all kinds, social, legal, and economic; respon- 
sibilities that are always imperative while often intricate and 
obscure. In meeting them the Christian motive is of the very 
first importance. 


: ‘ f 
AE, 
ay 





CHAPTER V 
COUNTRY LIFE 


The problems of the country districts are less spectacular than those of the city; 

they are none the less acute. In some respects they are even more difficult of 

solution, for in the city a man’s social needs can find an easy satisfaction that is 

denied to him in the country. So the formation of a Christian community in a 
rural locality is an achievement of the greatest worth. 


WO-THIRDS of the world’s population are rural. 

Democracy cannot prevail unless these country folk are 

competent for democracy. The world cannot be Chris- 
tianized until the rural communities of the world are Christian. 
The rapid spread of industrialism and_ its accompanying 
growth of urbanism bring into constantly sharper relief the 
place and the problem of the countryside in the progress of 
civilization. The relation of Christianity to country life be- 
comes, therefore, one of the abiding fundamental questions 
that lie before mankind. 

In rural America the “old régime” was, of course, a period 
of settlement. It was a remarkable conquest of the soil for 
civilization, quite beyond anything else of its sort in all previous 
history. There were two types of settlers. First came the ad- 
venturer, ever the bold man, sometimes the bad man, but oftener 
a man merely unconventional and bohemian in his tastes. He 
was the scout of civilization. He cleared the way for the cov- 
ered wagon. The other type of settler was the home-maker, 
the man who journeyed westward in the covered wagon and 
carried his plough with him. The home-makers often went in 
groups, sometimes for sake of protection and fellowship, and 
occasionally an entire neighborhood or community moved 
farther west. But in general it was a migration of families 


swarming from the home hive out to new hives, and each new 
55 


56 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


hive occupied the “family-size” farm. It was a migration of 
families in the main, neither of individuals on the one hand 
nor of communities on the other. | 

These settlers, however, took their social life and community 
institutions with them, principally the school and the Church. 
In those parts of the country where the Church did not go along 
with the migration it soon followed, either as a matter of 
initiative on the part of the people themselves in the new 
country, or because it was pushed out by aggressive church 
bodies who felt that the home missionary work was a great 
opportunity for the Christian Church. 

Country life was quite distinctly religious. Whole families 
went to church. Family prayers were well-nigh universal. 
The Bible was taught more or less in the home. If a complete 
list of preachers and foreign missionaries could be made with 
reference to their origin, it would be found that to an aston- 
ishing degree they came from the farm families of the old rural 
régime. 

Undoubtedly an altered environment has had a profound 
effect upon the Church in the country just as it has had upon the 
Church in the city. New modes of communication, the change 
from the self-sufficing type of agriculture to the commer- 
cial type, new developments in education, the increase of the 
co-operative method in farm marketing and farm business have 
unquestionably all had their influence. Indeed, it is not unfair 
to say that the country Church has not in the main kept pace 
with those processes of social change which have bridged the 
difference between the old régime and the new in our American 
rural life. 

Doubtless the total effect of Christianity on country life has 
sprung in part from the general conditions prevailing in the 
cities as well as in the country. For example, the old type of 
Christianity was personal and individual; the new type tends 
to be social and collective, sometimes even at the expense of 
that aspect of religion which deals with the inner man. The 
old type of Christianity has been weakened in its hold upon all 
our people both in city and in country, and the new type has 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 57 


not yet been thoroughly established. We cannot charge the 
country itself, therefore, with all of the changes that may have 
taken place in respect to the influence of Christianity upon 
country people. Some of these influences are nation-wide if not 
world-wide. 

An illustration of these great drifts of opinion is the dif- 
ference between the present attitude toward foreign missions 
and that which existed fifty or seventy-five years ago. Foreign 
missions were begun under the deep-seated conviction that the 
Christian message must be given to the heathen of other lands, 
and the heathen were people who were ignorant of, or who had 
not obeyed, the Christian message. We still have heroic mis- 
sionaries; yet there is little doubt but the older groups were 
possessed by a certain intensity that carried them far in their 
quest for an opportunity to preach the Gospel. Today the 
missionaries themselves have, relatively speaking, ceased to 
think of these people as heathen. It is a matter of salvation, 
but from a different angle. The people “back home” have 
also come to hold that opinion. We have an altered idea of 
what religion is, and this, of course, has affected the place of 
Christianity in country life just as it has in city life. 

There is, moreover, the peculiar effect of the World War 
upon our religious convictions and ideas. In some respects it 
has broken down faith in religion. In other respects it has 
driven people back to a more primitive conception of religion. 
In other cases, of course, it has simply forced a reconstruction 
of thinking and a broadening of horizons with respect to how 
religion can be applied to all the affairs of all people every- 
where. 

We have to reckon in America with what is perhaps the 
most remarkable exhibition of material prosperity that the 
world has ever seen; for this has vitally affected our religious 
life. We have comfort and convenience beyond measure. It 
is now much harder for young people to be self-denying, not 
to say ascetic. It is difficult to preach or to live the Gospel of 
self-restraint, of self-sacrifice, of doing without. We have 
carried this spirit so far that we are wasteful and extravagant. 


58 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


The country has not shared the prosperity of the city, but the 
spirit of comfort has spilled over into the country. For example, 
take the automobile. It is almost scandalous, of course, the 
extent to which people who cannot afford the automobile have 
managed to procure it. Country people probably have a far 
more valid excuse for the automobile than have almost any 
other class of people, because of their distance from the cen- 
ters. In country as in city one of the greatest foes of religion 
today is this feeling of content with physical and material ad- 
vantages and resources. 

There are a number of rather specific transformations that 
have taken place in American farm life during recent years, 
almost revolutionary in character, which have probably affected 
religious thought in rural communities. The more significant 
of these changes may be mentioned, although it is not by any 
means possible to trace, much less to measure, the exact part 
each has had in such changes in Christian thought or work as 
may have taken place. 

One of the amazing changes in country life has been brought 
about largely through new means of communication. First came 
the telephone, then free rural mail delivery, the interurban 
trolley in certain spots, the automobile, and finally the radio. 
No study has been made as yet which depicts fully the effect of 
these modern means of communication upon religious life. 

It is said that but one in six of the town and country churches 
have full time resident pastors and that only one out of six 
of the town and country population is a church member. 
Probably these two facts are rather intimately bound together. 
A resident pastor is almost essential. A notable exception is in 
the case of the “larger parish”, where a number of churches 
are served by a number of men and women each with a special 
task, as of preaching, pastoral service, work with young people, 
and so on. In the early days denominationalism was probably 
a good thing. The zeal of a denomination, which at that time 
represented some intellectual conviction or some special type 
of emotion, served to push the Church vigorously into new 
places. But in later days denominationalism has been almost 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 59 


wholly a bad thing because it has become so thoroughly com- 
petitive. It has been recently shown beyond peradventure that a 
large proportion of home missionary funds goes to small com-° 
peting country churches. This situation is improving. The 
community Church as such may not be the way out, but it is dis- 
tinctly a protest against denominationalism. It is quite possible 
that the Church of the future in the country community will 
have obvious denominational connections. The vital need is that 
it shall be a “community-minded” Church. Probably the 
standard of one country church for a thousand of population is 
as good as can be made on an arbitrary basis. 

It is too early to tell what effect the movement for agricul- 
tural organization is to have on the rural mind and rural 
institutions. It is bringing, for one thing pretty evidently, a 
change of emphasis from personal religion to social religion. 
It raises the question as to whether co-operation is a religious 
sort of thing. That seems to be true in Europe. The great 
co-operative movements in Europe among farmers have been 
led by men some of whom had a distinct religious conviction 
about the whole matter, and the movement took on the tone 
of a semi-religious enterprise. 

Father Raiffeisen, the originator of the little personal credit 
banks which have spread all over Europe, was a country pastor. 
From the beginning he asserted that while it was absolutely 
essential that the peasants should be enabled to free themselves 
from the yoke of bondage to the money-loaners, nevertheless he 
was working primarily for their spiritual and social welfare. 
Before the World War nearly all the prominent leaders of the 
co-operative credit and co-operative marketing movements in 
Europe were emphasizing the essentially religious character of 
the co-operative spirit—and this spirit, they believed, was more 
important in successful co-operation than the economic motive 
alone. In some countries the Roman Catholic Church became 
the leading factor in establishing co-operation. Hundreds and 
perhaps thousands of Protestant pastors and Roman Catholic 
priests have been local managers of various co-operative enter- 
prises in the different European countries. 


60 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


The main question is whether the general spirit of the co- 
operative method of selling farm products, for example, is 
thought of as simply a means of fighting the organized food 
handlers, or whether it also partakes somewhat of the spirit of 
working together for not only the common good of the pro- 
ducers, but also with ample consideration for the consumers. 

Generally speaking, education in respect to a scientific in- 
terpretation of life has not made as much headway in the country 
as in the city. On the other hand, the farmer’s business during 
the past generation has yielded itself almost wholly to science, 
and it is probable that the farmers are quite as appreciative 
of the problems involved in the relation of religion and science 
as are any other large group of people. What effect all this 
new knowledge may have had in weaning farmers away from 
the Church, it is impossible to say. There can be little doubt 
that the obvious discrepancy between much of the teaching from 
the pulpit and the teaching from the agricultural scientist has 
weakened the hold of religion upon the imagination of 
farmers. 

The country Church question has been discussed with vigor 
for some time, particularly during the last fifteen years, and 
much progress has been made. Seven or eight of the large 
Protestant denominations now have country church depart- 
ments, and the Roman Catholic Church has a man of unusual 
skill and distinction as well as breadth of view for its leader in 
this new field. Many country church surveys have been made. 
A number of educational institutions have begun to train coun- 
try preachers. Some State federations of churches have given 
special attention to the country. The greatest single contribu- 
tion has been the series of studies which have been made under 
the auspices of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, 
for they have provided the materials for pretty safe and com- 
prehensive generalizations on a nation-wide basis with reference 
not only to the Church itself but to the social and economic con- 
ditions which affect both the Church and vital religion. The 
community church movement is quite strongly rural. Hundreds 
of pastors in the country have taken on new hope and permitted 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 61 


themselves special study. Summer schools and conferences for 
country clergymen have been developed. The Young Men’s 
and Young Women’s Christian Associations have made great 
progress in the rural field. Agricultural missionaries have 
gone to foreign countries. Any candid survey of conditions of 
twenty years ago and at present would give ground for very 
considerable optimism. This is good, but not enough. For dur- 
ing that same period agricultural organization, agricultural 
education, even the rural schools have progressed far more rap- 
idly than has the country Church. We are not yet entered 
upon a genuine country church crusade. The country Church 
is not yet a problem unit. There is a tendency on the part of 
agencies assigned to vitalize religion to ignore the countryside. 
Until very recently in all the programmes for Christianizing 
industry, for example, not a word was said about agriculture, 
our largest industry. We must have a thorough awakening over 
the entire country on behalf of a revitalized country Church. 

At all hazards we must eliminate denominational rivalries. 
The center of gravity must no longer be the local church of a 
particular denomination, but the local community. It is not a 
matter of building the church, it is a question of saving com- 
munities. This reform must come chiefly from the denomina- 
tional “overhead”. It must be a denominational policy. 

But Christianity cannot be confined within the walls of the 
church. In this repect we need a re-definition of religion. The 
word itself does not convey the same impression to different 
men. It is often made synonymous with the Church; in other 
cases, with morals; or with emotional attitudes; or with good 
will; or with particular forms of belief. Of course all these 
elements are phases of religion. We still await a clear-cut 
understanding of the idea of religion in agriculture, for exam- 
ple, with due emphasis upon obligation, the development of 
a keen consciousness on the part of the farmers as the stewards 
of the soil. The farmer should go about his work with a right 
sense of trusteeship; he must get out of the soil all which it is 
capable of yielding, and he must still maintain or even increase 
its fertility. In business co-operation the farmers must give 


62 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the consumers “‘a fair deal”. Permeating activities and relation- 
ships of all kinds must be good will and friendliness, which is 
the essence of religion in its social aspects. 

There is, of course, the sense of justice, the sense of rights to 
be gained, legitimate and worthy and necessary. But religion 
cannot thrive on justice alone. It can thrive only on love. It 
is the giving rather than the getting, the sort of justice that 
comes not from the battle of opposing forces trying to oppose 
injustice, but as a result of free co-operation of individuals 
trying to help each other. 

In the swing towards the social emphasis upon religions 
there is the danger that the more intimate personal and inner 
phases of religion may be minimized or neglected. Religion as 
communion with the Creator, as the consciousness of God’s 
presence, as the spiritual life of prayer, as walking with God, 
as seeking God’s will, as commitment to working together with 
God for His great purposes in the world—these inner, funda- 
mental backgrounds of religion in social action are to be quite 
as much emphasized as the programme for Christianizing the 
world, because they are the dynamic that makes the social 
gospel possible. 

One approach to this inner aspect of religion in the case of 
farm people has a double meaning. In the reconciliation be- 
tween science and religion the farmer has an advantage in 
that he has come to be a scientist or at least has come to recog- 
nize the great fact of science. The tendency of the age is 
constantly away from religion as miracle, as supernatural, as un- 
usual, and towards recognizing that the universe is a universe 
of law; that the law of the spirit and the mind of man is 
quite as pervasive and abiding and powerful as is the law of 
the physical and material. Now the farmer knows full well 
about seed-time and harvest, about cause and effect. When he 
fulfils the law he gets results; when he disobeys the law he 
fails to get results. He is constantly trying to discover God’s 
methods and how to use them. This conception of law, in its 
broadest and best sense no less fundamental in religion than 
in the physical universe, is not merely the sole adequate basis 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 63 


for the personal or inner life but for social life as well. For 
it leads us to another law, in fact the only law of the Christian 
life—the law of love; of friendliness; of good will; of co- 
operation; of common work for common ends; of sacrifice; of 
friendship with God and friendship with man; the welding 
of the inner and outer aspects of religion, of the individual, and 
the social phases of Christianity. 

It has often been said that this generation has lost the sense 
of sin. But whenever it sins it pays the penalty just as former 
generations have done. There is no evading the law. Now 
the farmer is peculiarly sensitive to this matter of sin. He sees 
constant evidence of the punishment for violation of law. The 
law of punishment is ever before him, so much so that it is said 
that many farmers are fatalists. But he is also an observer of 
the law of healing—of the fact that nature seeks to mend the 
broken twig, to repair the injured wing, to stop the flow of 
blood, to heal the wound. The consequences of law violated, 
and the possibilities of the law of healing, are perhaps the 
most stupendous facts in the universe. They represent the 
bridging of the gulf between science and religion. No emotion, 
* no spirit of good will alone can make up for failure to rec- 
ognize these two laws. 

The community idea is the most fruitful conception in our 
modern rural life. For it calls to mind a small local group 
with its school, its church, its methods of planning together for 
the development of its business, buying together, selling together, 
having a common programme. When we realize the meaning 
of the community in rural affairs we shall begin at once a new 
approach to the rural problem—the community approach. We 
shall allot new tasks to all rural institutions, and among them 
the Church. We shall set up the Church as a community 
builder; as the organ for making the local group as completely 
as possible inwardly and outwardly Christian. 


CHAPTER VI 


ON A BY SA 


Probably no problems in our civilization are more insistent than those of the 

city. In part these are problems of the poor, the familiar evils of bad housing, 

congestion and the like. But aside from poverty the city in itself creates an 

artificial intensifying of life. On the other hand, it undoubtedly offers a legiti- 

mate gratification of legitimate needs and ambitions. Undiscriminating blame 

of the city is as uncritical as is indiscriminate praise, and the Christian sociologist 
must make his survey with the utmost impartiality. 


O from man to man or house to house asking, “What 

are you religiously?” ‘The answer of the vast majority 

of city people, as proved by actual canvasses, will be, 

“A Christian.” The city is an aggregation of population with a 
religious background, forming a series of constituencies of 
various faiths. The Church is an anciently founded organiza- 
tion which claims authority and regularity, which believes it- 
self to be the central expression of Christianity, and which asks 
allegiance on that basis. No separate enumeration of urban 
churches in the United States has been made since 1916; but 
it may be fairly estimated that there are about 17,500 in cities 
of more than 100,000 population. More or less affiliated with 
the Church are a great variety of educational and philanthropic 
activities and institutions under ecclesiastical auspices and sup- 
port; interdenominational institutions; non-sectarian institutions 
bearing the label “Christian”, some like the Young Men’s Chris- 
tian and the Young Women’s Christian Association, having 
acknowledged roots in the Church; new institutions and move- 
ments congenial with the historic purposes of the Church, 
though not formally connected with it and operating in similar 
fields. To these lay enterprises and by-products of the Church 


may fairly be added institutions but recently secularized, like 
64 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 65 


publicly supported education, charity, and recreational guid- 
ance. The State, historically speaking, has simply taken over 
and amplified numerous processes originated and long carried 
on formerly by the Church. In these functions it is accurately 
to be described as a Christian State. 

In all of these manifestations Christianity is a going concern 
within urban civilization. The city is relatively new, unstabi- 
lized, ill-regulated. The normal ratio between old and young, 
like that between the sexes, is distorted, while diverse and an- 
tagonistic races and nationalities are accidentally thrown to- 
gether in close quarters without mutual adjustment. Material 
facilities are enormously multiplied, especially machinery ap- 
plying power to the production of goods, to rapid transporta- 
tion, and to human convenience; but their products are not 
well distributed nor successfully related to human happiness. 
Population is mobile and transient, and human relations ex- 
ceedingly numerous but largely casual. Whatever structural 
consistency or evolutionary trend may be discerned in the 
processes of city growth, the city as such is rather menacing 
than comforting to human prospects, and no effort of control 
has yet remedied the essential general ugliness or prevented 
the greater part of newer urban development from being 
socially planless, impermanent, and unsatisfactory. 

Except those who are racially Hebrews, nearly all of the 
millions of American urban population call themselves Chris- 
tian. The Roman Catholic Church counts as members all 
who belong to it by historic antecedents. The Protestant bodies 
enumerate active, usually adult members, aggregating about 
one-fourth of the total native-born population in the larger 
cities. Beyond these recorded memberships stretch numerous 
fields of allegiance. Church attendants, financial supporters, 
Sunday school pupils, members of clubs and other subsidiary 
organizations, recipients of charity or social ministries, persons 
affiliated with the Church through family relationships, all 
contribute to the numbers who stand in some degree of ad- 
herence to the Church, And even inactive adherents, Catholic 
and Protestant alike, look to the Church for the sacramental 


« 


66 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


ministries of baptism, marriage, and burial, and “return to the 
fold” in the major crises of life. Studies of typical American 
cities show from two-thirds to three-fourths of the total popu- 
lation in some sort of significant present adherence to religion 
as organized through Church and Synagogue, while most of 
the remainder acknowledge recurrent or casual allegiance to 
the faiths of their fathers. Numerically speaking, the social 
phenomenon of belonging to and using religious institutions is 
among the most extensive, inclusive, and conspicuous in urban 
civilization. 

Formal church membership is keeping pace even with the 
enormous growth of city population, while increases in number 
and variety of religious enterprises and range of activities are 
almost equally great. 

Urban Christianity has become exceedingly complex. A 
church is provided for every fifteen or sixteen hundred people 
in the larger cities (probably more per capita in the smaller). 
Beyond this and beyond the usual agencies of religious evange- 
lism lie numerous hospitals and dispensaries; children’s and 
old people’s homes; hotels and lodgings for the homeless, un- 
protected, or poor; special institutions for defectives and con- 
valescents; institutions for wayward and delinquent children 
and youth; settlements and community centers, outing farms, 
and fresh air homes—all under ecclesiastical auspices. And 
there are, besides, extensive similar enterprises of religious 
origin and sympathy under non-sectarian control. Not infre- 
quently the ecclesiastically supported philanthropic institutions 
vastly exceed all public tax-supported ones, both in cost and in 
number of persons served. 

The many-sidedness of organized Christian enterprise is, 
therefore, not to be measured merely by the agencies bearing 
the label “church”. More and more, newly developed forms of 
social service seek church alliance while escaping church 
divisions and rivalries. Considerably more than half of all 
urban Boy Scout troops meet in churches; and an increasing 
number of similar organizations seek church sponsorship or 
organize their local units out of church groups. Important 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 67 


and highly specialized activities are carried on by such allies of 
the Church as the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian 
Associations. A few churches even cease to be churches in 
order to become recognized institutions of social service, while 
new types of institutions—Christian centers, community houses, 
and the like—are rapidly springing up under immediate ec- 
clesiastical control. 

City churches moreover enter into federations and form coun- 
cils, not only to plan co-operatively in view of the growing 
complexity of their problem and their own machinery, but to 
carry on street preaching, ministries in jails, public hospitals 
and almshouses, special work for homeless men. Gradually 
they come to pre-empt the strategic occasions and places of the 
city’s life. Great Thanksgiving and Lenten services, simul- 
taneous evangelism, and “drives” in behalf of idealistic issues 
Or practical enterprises are carried on by the churches unitedly 
—often on an interdenominational basis. All these reveal the 
growing complexity of urban religious enterprise. 

Beyond some twenty highly standardized denominations— 
that are accustomed to co-operate, and to do so have adjusted 
their sectarian divergencies within recognized and relatively 
narrow limits—lies the realm of the narrow, unstandardized, 
and petty sects with literally hundreds of uncounted diminutive 
religious groups in process of becoming churches. From the 
standpoint of religious phenomena, of course, they have equal 
interest with the more regular expressions of religion. On the 
whole, they are less original and variant than might well be 
desired. They tend to imitate the older denominations, to 
repeat old forms, and rapidly to shed their more pronounced 
peculiarities. While they are young, however, they add to the 
complexity of the urban religious situation. Contrasted, in 
short, with the rigidity and paucity of expression of rural 
religion, Christianity in the city is marvellously variant, flex- 
ible, and adaptive. 

The congestion of cities has strikingly affected Christianity 
as a user of space. High land values, in the first place, make 
it increasingly hard for a Church to acquire property. 


68 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Non-house-owning churches become more numerous in cities 
just as non-home-owning people do. Congregations worship- 
ping in rented halls constituted as high as seventeen per cent of 
the total number in several Eastern cities. Anxiety over “‘the 
rent money” besets the average poor Church just as it does the 
average poor family. 

When the city Church has acquired land it must use it in- 
tensively. This often means that it must build high. The erec- 
tion of sky-scraper churches with roof gardens and spaces for 
play is increasingly resorted to. In order to carry the financial 
burden of high-priced land part of it has to be devoted to 
income-producing purposes. Blocks of stores or offices may 
line the street frontage, while the Church depends upon ele- 
vators to make the higher portions of its building accessible 
for religious uses. Or the Church builds on the inexpensive 
rear portion of a lot, reserving only an entrance on the street as 
theaters do. 

These are legitimate results of urban competition for land. 
How far they will ultimately go in determining the practice 
of city churches can hardly be foreseen. Already urban 
church property has to be supplanted by vacation farms and 
camps where outdoor seasonal activities can be provided for 
the needier of the constituency. 

A direct consequence of urban congestion is that the church 
is needed as a place of resort for crowded and pent-up tene- 
ment populations. City streets and places of recreation do not 
provide adequate opportunity for normal living. The city 
church must therefore multiply the occasions on which its doors 
are open. But when it opens them it should do so for longer 
periods. Many city churches have discovered that city popu- 
lations lacking comfortable homes do not want short services 
but long ones. When they leave their homes it is to “make 
an evening of it”. Varied services, consisting of series of 
“features” or constituting a succession of social, religious, and 
cultural sessions on one day are increasingly characteristic of 
urban church work. 

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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 69 


must be more varied in equipment and will get harder wear 
than in the traditional church. 

The elaborate material facilities which characterize a city— 
its great systems of streets, transit lines, factories,.stores, apart- 
ment and tenement houses—challenge religious institutions to 
provide something just as adequate and efficient. City-minded 
people cannot see why the Church should not afford equivalent 
facilities for its ideal interests. At the same time they are in- 
creasingly sensitive to the waste and inefficiency of empty and 
idle churches. The exemption of such churches from taxation 
comes more and more to be questioned. Again, the artistic 
values of church property take on special significance under 
urban traditions. Cities are so prevailingly depressing and 
ugly that the Church does double service when it strikes the 
high notes of aspiration and faith in forms of dignity and 
architectural merit. The city Church needs, therefore, to be 
up-to-date in equipment in order to hold its own with the city 
as an instrument of civilization, a busy place built for hard 
usage, thus justifying the expenditure involved—all this and one 
of the esthetic assets of the city, besides. 

The urban constituency of the Church and allied social 
institutions consists not only of non-home-owning and crowded 
populations, but of a disproportionate number of adolescents 
and unmarried young adults whom the city has gained at the 
expense of the country. Again, in some of their sections Cities 
nearly always tend to pile up a surplus male population. Con- 
sequently, religious institutions in the city have to deal largely 
with people living outside of family relations. In providing a 
place of resort, the Church has, therefore, to become as far as 
possible a substitute for the home. Not the least of its functions 
is to afford opportunity for young people of the two sexes to 
meet and form acquaintances leading to marriage; while, with 
non-ecclesiastical agencies, the provision of cafeterias and places 
of recreation is an obvious adaptation of service to peculiar 
urban needs. 

In cities accessibility, gained through rapid transit facilities, 
is now taking the place of proximity as the basis of the most 


70 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


significant human relationship. While many of the neighbor- 
hood churches are holding their own it is virtually certain that 
other neighborhood institutions, in all older parts of cities, are 
relatively declining. Neighborhood moving picture theaters 
and dance halls, for example, are losing out to great central 
places of recreation. It comes to pass, therefore, that Chris- 
tianity has to address itself to large populations who are already 
accustomed to travel, frequently over long distances, in order to 
frequent central institutions of commerce, culture, and amuse- 
ment. Such people do not “live” here they slweep, but rather 
where they work and play. Some of their most vital hours are 
incidental to the daily ebb and flow of transportation. These 
intense concentrations of population and the larger uses of 
strategic centers are calling upon centrally located churches 
and allied institutions to provide noon-hour lunch rooms, as 
well as to open their doors for rest and meditation during the 
intervals of the exacting day and at hours when night-workers 
and domestic servants have leisure. They also afford Chris- 
tianity a hearing more frequently and on a vaster scale than 
was ever possible through small local churches. 

The city crowds, resident and transient, are accustomed to 
getting many of the satisfactions of life without personally 
knowing the people who share them—in restaurants, theaters, 
and other places of public resort. Similarly, numerous city 
churches have become rather places of congregation than of 
fellowship. Big audiences visit them to hear eminent preach- 
ers or fine music, without ever becoming either permanent 
attendants or acquainted with one another. Such a situation 
genuinely represents urban life, which includes a multitude of 
incidental transient and anonymous human contacts. A Church 
may too easily excuse itself on these grounds for not cultivating 
such personal friendliness as is possible under urban conditions. 
Such a Church greatly needs to learn the value and technique 
of a “touch-and-go” ministry to the shifting multitude. 

Christianity shares the limitations of the contemporary urban 
situation. Most American cities have become cities, if indeed 
they were not founded, within the memories of living men. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 7! 


They have been hastily thrown together, without logical or con- 
sistent principles of growth. Christianity naturally has experi- 
enced difficulty with cities under such conditions. It is fair 
to say in extenuation of the city Church that it has never really 
got beyond the pioneering stage. 

The most outstanding process of city growth is the constant 
redistribution of population brought about by the changing 
uses to which urban land areas are put. Former mansions carry 
“Furnished Rooms to Let” signs in their windows. Miles of 
once aristocratic residences are presently occupied by Negroes. 
The mortality of Protestant churches is extremely high, and the 
number surviving without actual or prospective growth is 
excessive, 

City changes have tossed about the surviving churches like 
corks. In certain cities, and in the districts of their major 
expansion, the average duration of a church upon a given site 
has been less than twenty years. Clusters of churches have 
moved in company, always in search of desirable supporting 
constituencies. In the course of half a century they have been 
allies or rivals in a succession of districts along a beaten path. 
Stranded churches, held by property obligations, or too weak 
or too stubborn to move, have lived on in impoverished areas, 
sometimes for years. Stranded populations, whose churches 
have moved out from under them, constitute a large percentage 
of the unchurched of modern cities. On the other hand, when 
all the reputable churches have moved or died, multitudinous 
petty religious organizations come creeping in. Without gen- 
eral influence, unsubsidized by the great historic communions, 
themselves exceedingly tentative and transient, poor churches 
of poor people, but sound in that they directly reflect the people 
they serve, they quickly fill the gaps and afford religious insti- 
tutions numerically almost as adequate as those which have 
gone. What is lost is continuity of ministrations, culture, 
efficiency, and prestige. Rarely. do the more conspicuous Prot- 
estant churches continuously maintain themselves in the same 
place through any extensive period of urban evolution. 

Such institutional changes are paralleled by, and in part due 


72 °*. AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


to, the bewilderment of religious thinking in the presence of 
extreme urban instability and change. Before such experiences 
the leisurely acquired religious conceptions, born of long rural 
contact with the uniformities of nature, are notably weakened. 
The first tendency of readjusted urban thinking naturally takes 
its clue from the new, man-made, man-controlled environment. 
In the presence of the amazing achievements of applied 
mechanics city populations are apt to think mechanically and, 
in this degree, scientifically. Almost every commentator upon 
urban psychology has observed that modern city people lack 
entirely the emotional bases of religious attitudes in the ex- 
periences of generations dependent upon weather, harvests, and 
a seasonal order of life. If, therefore, they continue to be 
religious it must be for a different reason. 

Shaken out of the closely knit neighborhood group as he is, 
through migration to the city, the individual can no longer find 
his ideal values and sanctions in face-to-face associations or 
in the traditions of the family or clan. Set free by the habit 
of mobility and by transportation facilities to choose his own 
associations, and belonging to many social groups for part of his 
time and with only part of his personality, the city man, in the 
totality of his personality, more than any human being ever was 
before, is an individual, set apart from and over against all the 
separate social experiences which have created and at the same 
time isolated him. Again, in the technical services which the 
city has performed for man the individual gets more detailed 
and careful attention than ever before in human history—at 
the hands of the State, of educational institutions, of physical 
and medical organizations, and of social welfare agencies. 

For better or worse, city life is like this. Whatever social 
re-groupings and associations the urban man enters into must 
start from this basis. So, by the same token, must any ethical 
reconstruction. Ethical behavior is necessarily behavior in 
numerous differing situations, most of them incidental or tran- 
sient instead of within a few permanent groups affording face- 
to-face relationships and eliciting permanent loyalties as in 
rural society. Ethical requirements, even those of distinctively 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 73 


Christian origins, cannot be merely simple, obvious, and uni- 
form. Ethical standards are sure to shift; and this, from the 
rural standpoint, is bound to seem like dangerous laxity. The 
transition from the older to the newer sanctions is necessarily 
fatally hard for numerous individuals, and Christianity has a 
special responsibility toward those undergoing this transition. 
But a new Christian ethics is being erected upon the pattern 
of the emerging urban society, with the emancipated individual 
as one pole and the complex city-community as the other. 
Within this new unit of association compelling loyalties are be- 
ing born anew, and God is being found vitally and afresh. 

Certain correspondences between urban Christianity and the 
city having been considered, let us view Christianity as express- 
ing the special characteristics of various elements of city 
population. For this purpose illustration may chiefly be drawn 
from the Church, though kindred agencies, like the Young 
Men’s Christian Association, reflect still more highly specialized 
constituencies, and most Christian social agencies obviously 
exist to serve particular types of need, 

Since urban birth-rates do not greatly exceed death-rates, city 
growth has mainly depended upon migration from rural com- 
munities or from foreign lands. The rapidity with which 
recruits from such sources are transformed inwardly into city 
people naturally differs greatly. Christianity gets a variant 
expression for every degree of urbanization. 

There are plenty of essentially rural churches in Cities, the 
religious creation of unreconstructed country people, either 
native or foreign. Thousands live in cities who are not at home 
in urban civilization, either because they are new in it or be- 
cause they came when too old to change. Many live close to 
the line of dependence and poverty; often their jobs are in- 
secure. Emotionally they are sufferers from group-homesick- 
ness. Their Christianity, therefore, tends to be an exaggerated 
return to primitive rural patterns. Through recurrent revivals, 
crude emotional exercises, antiquated theology, and a repressive 
and denunciatory attitude toward change, they register what is 
virtually panic in the presence of the city. 


74 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


All these phenomena signify a pathetic clinging to familiar 
levels of religious experience and an extreme reaction against 
new ways. The city’s nooks and crannies are full of “wild 
religions”: Pentecostal Gospel halls, transient ‘“‘store-front” 
meeting places, tents and actual tabernacles of boughs, in which 
bewildered and frightened people look backward for a God 
of the open country. Their institutional life alternately flares 
up and dies down, but perpetually renews itself on these humble 
levels of urban civilization. Within these groups the oppor- 
tunity of the devoutly mystical leader, who does find God in the 
backward-looking, is very great. It is no small service to bring 
religion to the socially unstable and bewildered; there is the 
possibility that the eruption of religious experience will cast 
forth something new and constructive into the life of the race. 
At least the stratified forms of ecclesiasticism, as they appear 
in the better-established denominations, need now and again 
to be shaken up by the stirring of fresher and more emotional 
types of faith. 

It is significant that the city furnishes its full quota of such 
religions in the working. In the large, however, Christianity 
on this level signifies a pre-urban state of mind, the survival 
within the city of the attitudes of the country-man. Most 
populations, indeed, drawn as adults from rural homes, will 
never be able fully to urbanize themselves. Old country and 
village traits will survive even though obscured. When, how- 
ever, such populations get themselves fairly well established 
economically, they are usually able to make the ordinary prac- 
tical compromises with the city. ‘They then settle down in 
urban areas of little pressure to re-think their old thoughts. 

In spite of their towering centers the hugeness of most 
American cities is that of interminable, sprawling expansion 
by means of a two-story or bungalow type of housing. The 
homes of the industrial classes in secondary cities are charac- 
teristically two or four-family houses surrounded by little plots 
of ground. Even Chicago has a million and a half of people 
living in houses designed for single families. 

The giant cities notoriously hold the more provincial 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION P5 


metropolis in contempt as little more than an overgrown country 
village. But even they themselves afford chances for many 
partial adjustments to urban life on the part of former country 
people. Religion being characteristically conservative, the 
religious habits of such people are less urbanized than are their 
lives in other respects. Considering merely relative numbers, 
it thus comes to pass that the most characteristic church of the 
large city is a small and unimpressive affair which departs 
from the small-town pattern but little in size and less in pro- 
gramme and atmosphere. 

In such small-scale churches thousands of Christians whose 
group ties were broken by removal to the city discover another 
set of neighbors, who came out of a similar early environment. 
They are enabled to readjust their social lives in the new and 
trying surroundings. Such churches are given a greater aver- 
age amount of personal time and financial support than the 
great city churches. Their activities are soon known and 
admit of wide popular participation. Through their relatively 
numerous subsidiary organizations all sorts of people of average 
capacity come to express their personalities through voluntary 
work under the initiative of modest leadership. Here thou- 
sands first learn urban group co-operation. It is scarcely 
possible to exaggerate the constructive social significance of 
these multitudinous small-church groups, existing on an essen- 
tially provincial level within the great city. They are quasi- 
urban, perhaps; surely not metropolitan. Frequently they are 
bitterly competitive with one another and inefficient as units of 
organization; but these admitted deficiencies should not obscure 
their larger usefulness. 

When Christianity goes outside of the Church and expresses 
itself on this level in secular idealism it organizes numerous 
fraternal lodges on the same essentially rural pattern. In the 
field of philanthropy it limits itself to the strictly traditional 
institutional charities—old people’s homes, orphanages, poor 
relief, not always up to current standards in quality. Docility 
to denominational suggestion and control, conventional theol- 
ogy, and a slight tendency to the tolerance of social practices 


76 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


formerly disapproved are the characteristic marks of these 
churches. ‘They have not ventured upon any radical recon- 
struction of ethical positions. In them Christianity accurately 
reflects a quite definite level and version of urban life and a 
clearly definable element in the population. 

The more successful inhabitants of the city from the stand- 
point of wealth, and the more fully urbanized, are largely the 
children of rural parents or country people who come to the city 
in youth, now fully merged with the city-born group. They 
also have churches of their own sort, churches which begin to 
be characteristically urban creations. These churches are larger 
than the average, spend more money, are better equipped, and 
maintain more highly elaborate programmes both of worship 
and of service. Perhaps their central characteristic is the at- 
tempt at all-round ministries to body, mind, and spirit. To this 
end they maintain a full complement of separately organized 
activities. 

These churches become centers of the social life of their 
groups in many phases. One must discern in them a new 
method of living together on the part of more highly urbanized 
people, whose interests no longer center primarily in their 
homes. For example, the typical morning services of such a 
Church consists of a nursery for infants, a children’s Church 
with juvenile deacons, ushers, and musicians, besides the adult 
worshipping congregation. There will be numerous subsidiary 
organizations carrying on week-day activities. In other words, 
religious life is graded, adapted, and sub-divided. ‘Through 
such means churches of this type often gather many otherwise 
detached individuals from long distances, who never come into 
first-hand fellowship with the central group of the institution. 
They constitute a dual and sometimes a triple constituency. 

Urban Christianity, as reflected in these churches, is enter- 
prising and alert. It puts large stress on organization. It has 
developed a highly specialized ministry formed into paid pro- 
fessional staffs of numerous members. It employs a modern 
advertising and business technique and, in its better-organized 
Sunday school, has the beginnings of an elaborate pedagogy 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION Hd 


of religion. Such churches with some exceptions are character- 
istically interested in activity rather in theology. In harmony 
with liberalizing urban tendencies they accept non-repressive 
codes of ethics and tend to cherish a generally tolerant outlook. 
They have near analogies in the predominantly social and sec- 
ular programmes of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s 
Christian Associations, the Boy and Girl Scouts, the Rotary 
and similar service clubs. 

But for all that these churches singly are too feeble to make 
any strong impression upon the city as a whole, while their scat- 
tered memberships are not closely identified with any one neigh- 
borhood in particular. Consequently, when they remove, as 
they frequently do, the loss is slight except for some remnant 
of their constituent group. They are not permanently respon- 
sible institutions underlying the city’s social structure. In them 
and their allies Christianity reflects another definite level and 
phase of urban life with the well-marked traits of its 
population. 

Probably not more than ten per cent of all city churches 
attempt a full formulation and direct application of their re- 
ligious and social ideals to the life of any particular community. 
Some churches, however, are currently attempting such appli- 
cations in three different ways. They may themselves become 
permanently responsible community institutions, in fields 
usually occupied by specialized social agencies through taking 
on additional departments of social work, such as kindergartens, 
day nurseries, clinics, employment bureaus, recreation centers. 
They may sponsor and foster the work of other social organ- 
izations, devoting thereto much thought, time, and money. Or 
they may attempt, in large ways, to direct the activities and 
relationships of their members into contact with and responsi- 
bility for the social and civic issues of the community. 

Churches strongly characterized by a social consciousness and 
programme in any of these departures are few in number, partly 
because but few people in a city have achieved an ethical 
viewpoint commensurate with its problems or made civic and 
social interests consistently central in religion. On the other 


78 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


hand, certain communions maintain exceedingly traditional 
views of the proper scope of the Church’s functions, tending to 
limit them to the anciently accredited ones of evangelism and 
teaching. But there is a third position: many Christians who 
are acutely concerned with the social applications of religion 
doubt whether direct church effort through sectarian forms 
goes as far as, or is as valuable to community life as, non- 
sectarian voluntary movements or the supporting of the con- 
structive policies of the Christian State. 

As an institution, the socially-minded Church may be either 
local or city-wide in relationships. If local, it seeks to identify 
itself with its neighborhood and to integrate its work with all 
constructive activities of some natural unit of population. If 
city-wide, it concerns itself with civic and social policy for the 
whole community. Such churches habitually employ technical 
experts and sometimes try to direct their efforts through scien- 
tific research and experimentation. 

One of the most conspicuous marginal phases of urban 
Christianity is the great central pulpit about which a few men 
of genius manage to gather large followings, often without any 
strong institutional background. The power of such pulpits 
tends to wane suddenly with the passing of those who have 
created them. 

There are also ultra-critical religious groups Christian in 
interest and atmosphere if not always in form, who express them- 
selves in sporadic movements or in literature rather than in char- 
acteristic ecclesiastical modes. ‘These tendencies in turn have 
two phases, the one more intellectual, the other more esthetic. 
In either, Christianity is regarded as offering certain values to 
modern life which should be experimentally explored as part 
of the art or creative process of living. 

Still again, the city breeds a numerous school of neo-mystical 
practitioners, sometimes strongly interested in a quasi-scientific 
approach to religion. Finally, come cults which more directly 
offer a specific remedy for the over-strain and consequent ab- 
normal complexes of urban life, Among them it seems fair 
to class Christian Science and kindred movements. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 79 


Such urban types generally fall within two groups: persons 
of highly sophisticated intelligence but of little capacity for 
practical success in the competitions of the modern city; and 
the well-to-do, protected, and idle classes, typically dwelling 
in hotels, largely detached from family and community re- 
sponsibilities, and pre-occupied with their own physical and 
spiritual experiences. 

Thus all along the line religious phenomena and the 
characteristics of particular urban populations are closely 
correlated. ‘The series of illustrations which has been offered 
does not assume to be complete. It covers, however, some of 
the major types of urban population in some of their out- 
standing attitudes. These have been considered as coloring and 
modifying Christianity and being in turn organized by it on 
an impressive scale; they prove, at the very least, that urban 
Christianity is no mere survival. It reflects in manifold detail 
the protean aspects of the city and functions on many levels. 
In turn, it may be said that no significant phase of city life is 
without its appropriate reflection of Christianity. 

How Christianity and the city might evolve together in the 
future can only be guessed by the trends of the movements here 
considered. Christianity cannot be said to have dominated city 
life in the past; and this appears in conflict with its genius, 
which in other spheres has been characteristically imperial in 
purpose. It is probably not logical, however, to charge Chris- 
tianity directly with the duty of “redeeming” the city or to con- 
demn it if the attempt fails. For there is obviously a prior 
question: perhaps humanity ought not to be attempting urban 
existence in its present form. ‘The decentralizing of urban 
population and its scattering out into clusters of semi-urban 
villages would obviate most of the congestion, the ill-balance 
of the component human elements, the complexity and the need- 
less mobility which now characterize the city. In short, it is 
quite possible that the city is demanding more adaptability than 
human nature is capable of.- Christianity may have been in- 
tended as a practice for people who have not departed so 
sharply from men’s original manner of living. If this were 


80 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


assumed to be the case, Christianity’s saving contribution to 
the city would be to disintegrate the urban complex; while for 
city people, repentance, objectively considered, would consist 
in a measurable return to simpler conditions of life. 

Co-operating with economic and social trends such as a 
diminished food supply for the race and the need of escaping 
the virtual physical deadlock over congestion, as well as from 
its terrible attendant evils, Christianity may, at least, have 
energy enough to turn the tide against the further massing of 
mankind in great cities. At any rate, Christianity can create 
some of the conditions of its own success. Even during the bad 
quarter-of-an-hour during which the city may persist in its 
present form specific maladjustments and evils can be greatly 
mitigated. ‘The churches are coming into the use of greater 
scientific precision in their work, and with a broader co- 
operation among themselves and between themselves and the 
non-ecclesiastical forces of Christianity. 

A focusing of the known and controllable resources of Chris- 
tian civilization upon the problems of the city, area by area, 
can already perceptibly change its social complexion and the 
moral and spiritual fortunes of its people. Only continuous ex- 
periment, of course, can tell how far improvement might go. 
In meeting the ultimate issues of life, such as the realiza- 
tion of human personality in social relations and the achieve- 
ment of industrial and cultural democracy, urban Christianity 
is involved with the total of Christian civilization. 


CHAPTER VII 
CITY AND TOWN PLANNING 


Many of the evils produced by a city would never have been known if municipal 
development had been intelligently controlled. Consequently the specialists in 
the art of city planning can justly appeal for the moral support of all citizens. 

ITY planning, in the present sense of the words, or town 

planning as it is more generally known in England 

and in the British commonwealths, is an activity scientific 
in its aims and methods which has had its development within 
recent decades. In fact it can hardly be said to have begun 
its present career much before the year 1900. The study 
of public health, of course, began earlier. The philanthropic 
movement to improve living conditions for working-men was 
started in England about 1841 by the seventh Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, Miss Octavia Hill, and others. The Shaftesbury Act of 
1851 for the establishment of lodging-houses was followed by 
a sustained series of legislation in England designed to reform 
abuses in housing; the wider scope of town planning making 
itself felt at the later end of the series, as in the compulsory 
amendments and the original permissive provisions of the Hous- 
ing and Town Planning Act of 1909. In France a similar inter- 
est in housing was stirred as early as 1851 by a concern for sani- 
tary conditions; and the movement has followed in other coun- 
tries of Europe and in the larger American cities. The World 
War, with its interruption of normal speculative building and 
its necessities of providing for unusual concentrations of popu- 
lation at certain points, has brought the whole subject of hous- 
ing more conspicuously to the general attention. It remains to- 
day one of the gravest and most pressing of our Christian prob- 
lems in community life. 

81 


82 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Next to housing, if in some respects not taking precedence 
over it, the street plan, though now only one element of the 
city plan, is the feature which in a popular view often stands 
for the whole. The confusion here is a natural one. In the 
plain and untechnical sense of laying out a city, city planning 
has no certain historic beginnings. It is at least as old as the 
practice of the early Egyptians in laying down a system of 
streets for their imposing and surviving stone cemeteries. If 
we ventured to dogmatize enough to say that all cities from 
the earliest times must to some extent have been planned, we 
should probably be safe in adding that except for some rudi- 
mentary “zoning” (or limiting communal buildings, social 
classes of population, and trading groups), the city plan was 
the street plan and little else. The idea which differentiates 
the new science from the old practice is fairly described by J. W. 
Tomlinson—‘“not to develop, but to control development.” 
Such control cannot be accomplished by means of the street 
plan alone, and the new science embraces all the elements essen- 
tial to effecting such control. Or to put it differently, the prac- 
tice has suddenly transformed itself into a new and scientific ac- 
tivity by a remarkable and vigorous enlargement of its aims, 
in response to the complexity which has overtaken urban condi- 
tions since the middle of the past century, and in the service of 
our growing sense of the interdependence of the interests of com- 
munity life. 

The street plan has in fact gained a measure of general ap- 
preciation such as might be desired, though not so easily won, 
for all the other elements of the problem... There are out- 
standing incidents, such as Baron Haussmann’s remodelling of 
Paris and the American partial restoration of Pierre L’Enfant’s 
plan for Washington, which in popular estimation consist of 
little beyond a street plan serving an esthetic purpose. Hauss- 
mann and the architect Dechamps in 1852-1870 laid out the 
French capital with a medial parked and monumented way 
related to diagonal streets, the whole run through the earlier 
network. L’Enfant had superimposed on a rectangular basis 
a diagonal system centered on the Capitol Hill for his plan of 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 83 


Washington (1791). The rectangular northward extension of 
the street system of New York City in 1807, with its single 
Broadway diagonal, has earned a fame fully proportionate to 
the magnitude of the mistake. Penn’s plan for Philadelphia 
(1682) laid that city down in four quarters divided by two 
centrally rectangular avenues only a few years after Christopher 
Wren’s combined rectangular and radial plan for the rebuild- 
ing of London after the great fire (1666) was being disregarded, 
a plan which on a limited scale is reflected in Annapolis. What 
the medieval practice was is disputed. H. I. Triggs, for in- 
stance, holds that where towns were newly planned the street 
system was even more regular than in modern usage, while C. 
Sitte argues that the medieval irregularity where it exists was 
designed deliberately. We are today educated as to the defects 
of the checkerboard system; yet it is often referred to in Europe 
as an American device, and most Americans are surprised when 
asked to realize that it was the common system of Greeks and 
Romans, whose practice differed mainly in the Roman habit of 
levelling their sites.) The Roman prototype is identified with 
their regulation plan for military camps, a pattern which is 
found reflected in Chester in England, and in the Bergen Square 
section of Jersey City, formerly the Dutch stockaded village of 
Bergen. 

It may be worth while, by recalling a few such incidents, to 
remind ourselves that the earlier practice of laying out a city 
was so largely a matter of initiating a street system, because 
this will serve to make clearer why the present development 
deserves to be called scientific. We shall now see also that 
the double meaning—the old and the new, the simple and the 
technical meaning of the name—is involved more particularly 
in the sense given to the word plan. When an architect designs 
a building, his plan for better or worse is, of course, basic and 
controlling for all the rest of the design; and in such a sense 
the older city plan might be called architectural. In action 
the new science often finds itself dealing with this quasi-archi- 
tectural plan as a major factor if not a fixed obstacle in the 
problem. And the new plan is to be thought of as having less 


84 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the nature of a basic drawing than that of the broader meaning 
which is carried by the word when we speak of a plan of cam- 
paign; it is rather a scheme of relief, a programme of growth. 

Such an undertaking will obviously be subject to restraints 
if not directly animated by motives in which the aspiration 
toward Christian conduct may play its part. A science, to be 
sure, sets up its own ends for accomplishment and respects its 
own sanctions. Yet city planning is conspicuously productive 
of methods and results which have a Christian significance, 
because it depends for its success on the measure with which it 
is able to determine and to serve the present and future needs 
of the community as a whole. If then to our preliminary query, 
Is city planning a science? we add at once our major ques- 
tion, How does it answer in its work to Christian motive and 
meet Christian standards of community service? we shall find 
one answer bound up with the other. 

The method of city planning is scientific in that it first makes 
sure of its facts, in settling the data of each problem—and 
then proceeds to deal with the facts by applying observed prin- 
ciples of cause and effect. 

The preliminary collection of data needed for making a city 
plan includes a detailed study of the geography and climate of 
the region; the growth, distribution, and health of the popu- 
lation over periods of years; the statutory and constitutional 
powers for controlling development; and the financial re- 
sources. The region studied embraces, besides the occupied 
site, the territory which the community may be expected to 
occupy when the population shall have increased two, three, or 
four times; and the survey also runs back into the community’s 
past history by decades. The housing of the people, the use 
of their leisure, their industrial and commercial activities com- 
prise static factors of the problem; the means of circulation, 
the streets, their character and use, the varying density, transit 
time and cost of traffic, the movement of passengers and freight 
by railway and waterway, these present dynamic factors. Sta- 
tistics of every relevant sort, gathered mostly by first-hand ob- 
servation, portray the community’s daily life, much of its past 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 85 


experience, and the basis of its possible future. The work of 
assembling this material may require several years’ time and 
engage the labors of a trained group of observers. 

The instrument for the study of the data so collected is the 
chart and the map. The several categories of fact are digested 
on maps dotted with symbols; one map is consulted with refer- 
ence to other maps, and often the mapped results are super- 
imposed. The distribution of the so-called sleeping population 
and that of the working population, in either case both at the 
present time and in past decades, are two terms in the problem 
of transit circulation. Typhoid and infant mortality maps will 
be superimposed on maps showing detailed housing conditions, 
as will the mains and routes of water supply and sewage and 
garbage disposal. Playgrounds are plotted in conjunction with 
data on the family homes of juvenile delinquents and the loca- 
tion of street accidents. The radius of use of libraries will 
appear; contour lines will indicate the practical accessibility 
of focal points. The rainfall will be consulted in providing for 
the discharge of storm waters; the prevailing winds in zoning 
industries; the subsoil and rock floor, for planting parks. 

The method of investigation is, in short, one of exact measure- 
ment, the procedure is by quantitative analysis. The facts de- 
termined are the actual existing conditions and the definitely 
indicated tendencies. In deciding upon remedies for existing 
defects together with the desirable ends toward which the 
tendencies may be controlled, and in planning the physical and 
administrative means for securing such results, the method is 
an application of general principles deduced from previous ob- 
servation of similar facts. It would not by any means be 
fantastic to say that city planning relies on a study of the civic 
and urban organism, much as medicine and surgery are based 
in a study of the human body. And the pivot on which any 
city planning enterprise turns is the sense of responsibility for 
all of the community’s members in all their relationships, their 
well-being, and their opportunity—and not only the members 
of the moment but those of the years to come. 

This is to consider effects of the city plan within the limits 


86 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


only of the community which it serves. The whole movement 
is having effects reaching beyond the spheres of local enterprises 
by gradually establishing a body of general principles. The 
study of the subdivision of privately owned land, for example, 
has shown that our haphazard methods of parcelling agricul- 
tural tracts for urban occupation entail depreciation in real 
estate values and detrimental conditions when lot dimensions 
admit overbuilding for a denser population or impede the transi- 
tion from residential to business use. It is found that, much of 
our local street planning being related to the supposed advantage 
of original proprietors, an excessive proportion of land is often 
devoted to streets. This results in overburdening the cost of 
public improvements and thus in restricting the shelter and 
comforts of the home itself. The point in general is, that when 
the original proprietor is enabled to consult the best interests of 
later owners instead of acting to his apparent advantage in 
effecting immediate sales, he enhances the permanent invest- 
ment value of the property. 

It may probably be true that Wren’s plan for the rebuilding 
of London after the fire of 1666 could not be carried out be- 
cause of the claims of private owners; and similar difficulties 
may have stood in the way of D. H. Burnham’s plan for San 
Francisco reported just before the disastrous fire of 1906. But 
it is also true that there was no existing authority empowered 
to deal with the situation in either case, as there was in the 
British control of Saloniki at the time of its destruction by fire 
in August, 1917. That city was re-planned and the claims of 
owners satisfied at equivalent valuations in the allotment of 
newly created properties. Voluntary action by the communi- 
ties themselves helped to carry into effect the law requiring the 
re-planning of cities in the devastated area of France, a work 
in which American city planners took part. 

The stirring of the sense of responsibility for the well-being 
of the members of a single community resulting from local 
enterprise in city planning may not always wing Christian 
motive for a flight beyond municipal boundaries. Propaganda 
for bigger and better Main Streets may easily have a parochial 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 87 


inspiration out of harmony with a broadly inclusive Christian 
spirit. In America the impetus to city planning has probably 
come from a combination of civic ambition and esthetic aspira- 
tion as well as from the impatience with shameful conditions 
of overcrowding in the slums. The progress has been from the 
revised plan for Washington—intrusted to the commission com- 
posed of Burnham, F. L. Olmsted, C. F. McKim, and Augustus 
Saint Gaudens, and such ambitious improvements as Burnham’s 
and E. H. Bennett’s plan for Chicago, and the city center group 
and mall for Cleveland—to a movement for improving the 
economic and social development of cities generally. But the 
work which today stands at the forefront of the movement is 
the less spectacular task of zoning. By 1925 the number of 
zoned cities had risen to three hundred and forty, and a popula- 
tion of nearly thirty million was living in zoned areas. 

That the genius of city planning itself does not take any 
parochial direction appears in its latest development, that of the 
regional plan. The area studied in the regional survey covers 
a system of related communities; the plan provides for develop- 
ment to their mutual advantage. A great survey of this sort 
has been undertaken for the city of New York and its environs 
by the Russell Sage Foundation. New York State has a regional 
planning commission studying its present problems in the light 
of its industrial history. Regional plans are in process for 
several of the larger cities, the Connecticut Valley, and the Dela- 
ware River as affecting three States, New Jersey, New York, 
and Pennsylvania. In Great Britain, which has emphasized the 
study of garden cities, there were in 1924 twenty-six regional 
planning undertakings, of which the most conspicuous was the 
enterprise directed from Manchester, covering an area of one 
thousand square miles and acting in co-operation with one hun- 
dred local town planning bodies. 

The purpose to control development, noted as the distinguish- 
ing idea of the modern city plan, is extended in some recent 
discussion of the scope of the regional plan to a point where 
it crosses great economic forces of the day, such as the drift 
of population to cities and the attraction, for investors, of urban 


88 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


land values. In dealing with such tendencies, effective means 
of control do not appear to lie ready to hand. So far as regional 
planning remains a logical development of city planning, it 
continues scientific in method. In any case its more ambitious 
programme is stirring to the social imagination. And its in- 
spiration is centered in the hope of unifying a widening com- 
munity in a Christian spirit of mutual aid. 











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CHAPTER VIII 
BUSINESS ETHICS 


From the Christian point of view a business transaction should be an exchange 
in which both the buyer and the seller are benefited; when either enriches 
himself at the expense of the other, business tends to become brigandage. The 
development of a code of business ethics on sound principles is accordingly 
imperative. 
ANKIND is always engaged, more or less effectively, 
in the production and distribution of material goods, 
The purpose embodied in material goods is the pur- 
pose to sustain and enrich life. The activity involved is so 
various and widespread that it permeates our civilization, which 
we often distinguish from earlier civilizations as character- 
istically a commercial one. Commerce, industry, business— 
these terms may all have their specific meanings; but if for 
convenience we speak of the ethics displayed in this general 
activity as business ethics, it will be remembered that we are 
embracing in our view all the factors that enter into produc- 
tion and manufacture, the sale and distribution of commodities. 
The army whose behavior we are to consider includes farmer 
and miller, miner and trader, merchant, storekeeper, and errand 
boy. Is the discipline maintained in this army in its supply of 
general needs consistent with the ideals which the same men, 
women, and children set themselves as shareholders in our Chris- 
tian civilization? 

Few thoughtful persons probably fail to see that at bottom 
business ethics and the more strictly Christian ethics do not 
precisely meet. For the basis of business ethics is honesty and 
fair dealing, whereas the basis of Christian ethics is altruism 
and the love of our neighbor. It is a mistake which involves 


a good deal of confusion to suppose that the demand which 
89 


90 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Christianity makes on business amounts to the out-and-out sub- 
stitution of altruistic for egoistic conduct and motives. Our 
whole study of Christian civilization suggests that the Chris- 
tian influence works to effect a gradual adjustment to its destined 
ends. Our business ethics may be fairly regarded as an ap- 
proximation to Christian ethics; and the clash is not so much 
between these two as between the demands of our religious 
beliefs and our economic beliefs. 

The best Christian thought is thoroughly alive to the problem. 
The first task has been to formulate a statement of pertinent 
ideals. This has resulted in a series of pronouncements of which 
no less than seventy have been issued in the last decade and a 
half. A statement issued by the Federal Council of the 
Churches, generally known as the Social Creed, represents lib- 
eral Protestant opinion in America. The Roman Catholic 
Bishops’ Programme of Social Reconstruction is of similar im- 
portance. The specific application of such social ideals to con- 
crete problems is part of the undertaking of the Conference on 
the Christian Way of Life, more briefly known as The Inquiry. 
We are indebted also to the report on economic and industrial 
problems in the United States submitted to the Universal Chris- 
tian Conference on Life and Work at Stockholm in August, 
1925. 

The thorough-going study of the whole subject, which has 
thus been so carefully begun, enables us to see that the present 
conflict in our ideals may be traced back to the circumstance 
that the industrial revolution in England fell together in time 
with the development of a laissez-faire philosophy of industry 
and trade, and that in America the marked individualism which 
shaped our early ideas has not disappeared with the disappear- 
ance of the frontier which gave it scope. A dominant economic 
philosophy, in short, was perfected in the formative days of 
modern social thought which is not today approved in its fruits 
and yet still commands a too general theoretical acceptance. 

The English Conference on Christian Politics, Economics, 
and Citizenship (a name abridged to Copec) points the lesson 
more sharply when it says: “We are no longer under the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 91 


influence of the curiously unscientific illusion of the eighteenth 
century that, if each man will but follow his individual interest 
or advantage, it will result in the advantage of all. A century 
of industrial and social conflicts, of factory conditions and 
factory acts, lies between us and these fantastic dreams, and we 
know very clearly that if we are to attain to peace, if we are to 
establish mutual help and co-operation, we can only do it by 
careful thought and resolute effort, by deliberately and con- 
sciously setting before ourselves the common good as the end 
and purpose of human life.” 

So far as the business community still clings to the “classical” 
economics, it is exposed to the Christian indictment, as the 
later report to the Stockholm Conference has pointed out, that 
the doctrine is not only morally wrong, but that it is scientifi- 
cally unsound. And today the idea that labor is a commodity 
is steadily receding in our convictions. The older economics 
ignored the human factors which the newer economics are rec- 
ognizing. ‘The arbitrary rule of the law of supply and demand 
is losing validity. The quest for food and shelter is elemental ; 
but so also are self-expression and the impulse to mutual aid. 

While these fortunate drifts in economic opinion are ap- 
parent, they have not yet gathered sufficient strength to cure the 
whole labor movement of a generally belligerent tone. A con- 
dition of unrest and discontent is absent from a multitude of 
enterprises in which a co-operative good will has disarmed sus- 
picion and hostility; but in general it remains a characteristic 
of the day. Employers and owners show irritation at the de- 
mands of labor, holding them to be unfair and often impracti- 
cable. There is a well-defined grievance against the slackening 
of effort and curtailment of production; a fear of radical propa- 
ganda; an exasperation over the methods of labor leaders; and 
sometimes a defiance toward the whole movement roused by a 
sense of losses chargeable to controversy. 

The resentment of the employed has received a classic state- 
ment in the report of the United States Commission on Indus- 
trial Relations. The report found two sources of unrest in the 
unjust distribution of wealth and the danger of unemployment. 


92 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


“The conviction that the wealth of the country,” it says, “and 
the income which is produced through the toil of the workers 
are distributed without regard to any standard of justice is as 
widespread as it is deep-seated. It is found among all classes 
of workers and takes every form, from the dumb resentment of 
the day laborer who, at the end of a week’s back-racking toil, 
finds that he has less than enough to feed his family, while 
others who have done nothing live in ease, to the elaborate 
philosophy of the ‘soap box orator’, who can quote statistics 
unendingly to demonstrate his contentions. At bottom, though, 
there is the one fundamental, controlling idea that income 
should be received for service and for service only, whereas, in 
fact, it bears no such relation, and he who serves least or not at 
all may receive most. . . . Asa prime cause of a burning 
resentment and a rising feeling of unrest among the workers, 
unemployment and the denial of an opportunity to earn a living 
is on a parity with the unjust distribution of wealth.” 

The ethical question which arises in the demand or the search 
for a more equitable method of dividing returns has had a re- 
markable issue in the development of profit-sharing. Nothing 
could be much more revolutionary than the theory that profits 
are divisible on any other basis than stock ownership. Yet in 
one form or another this adaptation has been effected by many 
large and important enterprises. When stock itself is dis- 
tributed, either by dividend or by concession in price, the stock 
basis is not of course departed from. But profits are distributed 
in other forms, such as a bonus reckoned on period of service. 
Successful as this development has been in individual instances, 
the principle has not seemed to affect the general situation and 
has met disapproval on behalf of the benefited party as an 
attempt to purchase loyalty. Profit in this view is set apart as 
one element only, and by itself an insufficient one, in the priv- 
ilege of control. The problem of unemployment, which has so 
far obviously defied solution, has given its impetus to the systems 
of pensioning retired employees who have given a full measure 
of years in service, and insuring against accident, illness, and 
death. In some instances the cost of insurance is defrayed by 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 94 


the employer, in others by the employed; but in either case, 
like the mutual insurance organized by bodies of the employed 
themselves, the attempt is to cut down the strain of insecurity. 

In the ordinary sense profit-sharing may be regarded as an 
increase in the wages of labor at the expense of the so-called 
wages of superintendence. The standard of wages is the major 
source of contention in all business relations. There is at pres- 
ent no general acceptance of the ethical validity of collective 
bargaining, the new instrument devised by the employed for 
carrying on this struggle. In the industrial conflicts which 
waste so much energy in our economic life there is an ethical 
defect apparent in the measure of co-operation and responsibil- 
ity assumed by the employed. The community’s self-protective 
remedy, the arbitration of disputes, does not in itself fully meet 
an ethical test. On this subject the report of the Conference on 
Ethical Forces in Advancing Standards in Industry (July, 
1924) points out that, “arbitration has little in it to commend 
from the ethical point of view, unless it is a device self-imposed, 
merely as an instrument in the process of social adjustment 
within industry. When imposed by the community it may per- 
haps be justified as an emergency measure, but it is essentially 
a negative and anti-social procedure because it puts an end to 
the only processes that can result in true solutions; it is terminal 
and static, not creative.” On the other hand, arbitration ma- 
chinery jointly maintained and operated for the continuous 
government of industries under trade agreements, such as is 
illustrated in developments in the garment industry, the news- 
paper business, the glass industry, and the stove and heater in- 
dustry, points the way to a progressive establishment of a 
constitutional basis in industrial government and gives a con- 
crete embodiment to the spirit of co-operation. 

The expedient known as employee representation, which is 
involved in such adjustments to a more Christian brotherhood 
of control, is one of the signs of progress due to, and in consid- 
erable part surviving, the stress of the World War years. The 
intensified interest in “morale” was largely responsible, no 
doubt; but the whole personnel movement in industry and 


94 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


business shows that we have now come to rank human relation- 
ships at least on an equal level with any technical element as a 
factor in the success of an enterprise. However imperfect the 
results may be as yet, the drift lies away from autocratic govern- 
ment in business when provision is made, as a matter of right 
and custom, for the airing of grievances and the meeting of man- 
agement and men to discuss common problems. 

The ethical questions underlying such developments as these 
arise from the exercise of power. The warnings against the 
corrupting effects of the love of power are written plainly across 
the face of the Christian Gospel. The desire for self-expression 
is elemental in all men. The psychological basis of competition 
itself is probably the impulse to gain social approval. The com- 
petitive motive in business requires some measure of social con- 
trol over its operation. But it requires also a measure of 
spiritual control, if as a principle of aspiration in personal char- 
acter it is to be brought into harmony with the goals of human 
effort approved in the teachings of Jesus. 


CHART E RL: 
THE RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP 


The primitive Christian teaching about property was based on a conception of 

“stewardship” or service, but perhaps no primitive Christian principle has been 

so flagrantly neglected as this. As a result the property right is today being 

called drastically in question by powerful forces which often disclaim any 
connection with Christianity. 

WNERSHIP is the most dangerous and perhaps the 
most necessary of all the rights devised by social man: 
it is most necessary since without property he is helpless, 

incapable of activity or any fulfilment; most dangerous because 
property is the great divider, raising sheer barriers between 
mine and thine, against which the strongest desires of men in- 
cessantly surge. The form of ownership is the foundation of 
every social order and the supreme institutional test of its ethical 
quality. Every system of ethics, and beyond that every religion, 
must, in so far as it exercises a living influence in the world, 
take a clear stand on this crucial question. . 

We can broadly distinguish successive stages in the general 
attitude of Christianity towards ownership. Christianity was 
at first an alien disturber of the social order, out of accord with 
the prevailing traditions. It asserted with quiet underground 
persistence its own view of life, but it was powerless to control 
to its ends the great machine of state. It had no influence over 
political authority or over social institutions. Its kingdom was 
not of this world. Under these conditions it formed an inner 
society of its own while accepting the conditions imposed by the 
outer world. ‘The things of Caesar must be rendered unto 
Caesar. Slavery and exploitation were part of the established 
order. To this order Christians were submissive. Had not St. 

95 


96 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Paul said, Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers? It 
was only to be for a season because the end of the world was at 
hand. It was, therefore, only in the life of the small Christian 
community that their ideas on property found expression. In 
the household of faith what a man had was for the service of the 
brethren. The Christian duty to help the needy overbore the 
sense of private ownership and led to a mutuality of possession 
which approached the character of a communism. Indeed it 
was said of the early Christians by outside observers like the 
second-century Greek author Lucian that they “held all things 
in common,” 

A new stage begins in that remarkable process by which 
Christianity gained acceptance as the official religion of the 
Roman world. The triumph was achieved at a cost. There 
was an inevitable dilution of Christianity. "The leaven per- 
meated the whole lump, but it lost in the process much of its 
energy and purity. The problem of applying Christian ideas 
of property within the established order was in any case a far 
more difficult one than that which the simple Christian com- 
munity, withdrawn from “the world”, had to meet. There were 
various aspects of the established code of the getting and the 
owning of wealth which ‘were inconsistent with the original 
spirit of Christianity; but the chief of these was the system of 
slavery. Here was the test before which established Chris- 
tianity signally failed. The Fathers might declare that God 
had intended the earth for the common possession of all men, 
so that each might have according to his need. They might 
insist, like St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, that it was the greed 
of men which had perverted this original order. But these 
two abstract notions were fused with the philosophical distinc- 
tion between what exists by “nature” and what exists by con- 
vention; and the former was thought of as a remote ideal, lost 
to the world since the “fall” and incompatible with the desires. 
and instincts of fallen humanity. The precepts of the Fathers 
emphasized almsgiving. Slavery was condoned, with only such 
modifications as were implied in the humane treatment of the 
slave. ‘Broadly speaking,” says Vernon Bartlet, “the idea of 





© Edgar and Winifred Ward 


COAL AND IRON 


POY pe ul ff puv ADOPT a) 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 97 


property as a social and economic institution really remained 
pagan and, so far as embodied in law, Roman in its spirit and 
presuppositions.” 

A great change came over the institution of property as out 
of the chaos of a broken civilization the system of feudalism 
took form. A vast empire fell into the hands of barbarians; but 
its commerce, trade, and manufactures were ruined, and little 
remained but the primary form of possession, that of the land 
itself. Nor was it possible for the invaders to maintain a cen- 
tralized control, for which they lacked alike the science and 
the discipline. So arose the feudal order with its hierarchical 
system of land-tenure, with its great lords and lesser lords who 
held their lands as “‘fiefs”, subject to financial and military serv- 
ice rendered to an overlord, ultimately the king or emperor. 
The Christian religion maintained and enhanced its influence 
beyond these catastrophic changes; but it suffered a perilous 
metamorphosis. For the Church, too, became a feudal pro- 
prietor, and lords spiritual took their place beside lords tem- 
poral. ‘The more deeply religious natures again found refuge 
in special retreats, in such of the monastic communities as aban- 
doned the pretensions of power or wealth and taught the rule 
of poverty and worldly sacrifice. But the Church as a whole 
did little to change the prevailing principle of property, al- 
though that principle tended in a peculiar degree to make 
personal rights depend on the possession of land, and the non- 
possessor, the cultivator, the serf, a mere adjunct of the land to 
which he was bound. Within this order there grew up the great 
distinction between Church and State, between the temporal 
and spiritual powers, the two authorities acting within a single 
society. Property was the creation of the State, a temporal 
institution which like any other might be and should be made 
subservient to the spiritual power. But the fixity of institutions 
was little questioned in that age. Instead, therefore, of attack- 
ing the degradation of personality which the system involved, 
the Church was concerned to advocate almsgiving and other 
forms of charity. Instead of combating serfdom and slavery 
the Church forbade usury. The attack on usury was in large 


98 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


measure justified by the economic conditions of an age in which 
borrowing was mainly due to the sheer necessity of the poor 
or to the extravagance of the rich, and therefore was associated 
with either extortion or prodigality. It lost most of its efficacy 
as soon as industrial and commercial development created the 
opportunity for productive borrowing. 

Slavery passed away. The serfs were gradually liberated as 
a new economy came into being. The influence of the Church 
tended to the side of liberation; but it must be admitted that 
the efficient causes were social and economic, not primarily re- 
ligious. In the Middle Ages men were powerfully controlled 
by ideals, but they were not ideals of social development. The 
remarkable developments which took place in this period were 
not the results of conscious purpose working towards these goals. 
Men either accepted the prevailing social system, imbued with 
the thought of its fixity, or else they withdrew from society as 
from a place unalterably alien to their spirits. What was 
termed “imitation of Christ” set men apart from “the world”. 
Under such conditions men like St. Francis of Assisi embraced 
a life of poverty. But this sheer abnegation, intensely religious 
as it was, offered no constructive principle by which the owner- 
ship of wealth might be converted to the greater service of 
mankind. 

The feudal system decayed. Land-ownership declined in 
significance before the new wealth of commerce and then of 
industry. An ever smaller proportion of the population of civ- 
ilized countries was needed to till the land and supply the rest 
with its agricultural needs. New opportunities and forms of 
enterprise arose. The age of capitalism had begun. Wealth 
became more fluid, more mobile, in a sense more intangible. 
Ownership became increasingly the ownership of rights or titles 
to income, whose very source might be unknown to the recipient. 
Forms of inheritance, developed under a land economy, such 
as entail and primogeniture, became more or less obsolete. And 
as the character of ownership changed so did the problems 
of social justice. The central problem was no jonger that of 
land-owner and land-cultivator but that of capitalist and 


‘pIT sabpne QO) 








THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 99 


wage-earner. The new age was one of wealth and instability of 
opportunity and lack of opportunity, of restless change in which 
the thought of a predestined and eternal order of things could 
bring little comfort to the rich and less resignation to the poor. 
The grounds of discontent were also those of hope. The claims 
of social justice became louder and more insistent. There was 
no longer any retreat for the religious spirit. Men required a 
social gospel, an application of Christianity to the distracting 
conditions of an age of vast economic change. 

In contrast with the Middle Ages the modern period devel- 
oped an individualistic outlook. This was true in religion also, 
particularly in the growing body of Protestantism. The stress 
was laid on a personal salvation, a direct relation between the 
individual and God. This spirit was revealed in the Protestant 
attitude towards property. It is witnessed most clearly in the 
Puritan doctrine, in which private property is a gift of God and 
the difference of wealth and poverty falls within the divine 
order. But the apportionment of it is, under ‘“Providence”’, de- 
pendent on individual endeavor, on the industry and skill and 
enterprise which a man displays. The Puritan emphasized 
accordingly the virtue of prudence. The counsel of prudence 
was more apt to control the spending than the getting of wealth, 
apart from ordinary considerations of honesty. It exalted self- 
help and self-reliance. The social responsibility of wealth it 
translated as stewardship, the obligation to make the best use of 
what one has, to treat it as a trust, and to minister personally to 
the needs of others. 

This ideal of stewardship is capable of great development 
yet has distinct limitations. It forms an admirable guide in the 
disposal and consumption of wealth; but it is far less adequate 
to furnish a constructive criticism of the institutions on which 
wealth and poverty depend. It is apt to ignore the immense 
social evils resulting from the lack of Opportunity, from the 
insecurity of employment, from the sheer dependence of large 
numbers of wage-earners on a system which subjects them to 
the excessive, exhausting, and often degrading hazards of de- 
mand and supply. It is apt to be over-complacent about riches 


100 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


and poverty, as though the extreme disparities of these were 
divinely ordered. It is scrupulous concerning individual recti- 
tude but less so concerning social equity. It praises reliance 
on self but scarcely recognizes how the spirit of the poor may 
be embittered or broken by their poverty. It is sympathetic 
with success but unsympathetic with failure, the causes of 
which it views too narrowly. On that account it falls short of 
the understanding of Christianity, with its supreme insistence on 
the intrinsic worth of the individual, in terms of which it judges 
all social institutions. 

There has been, consequently, among those who seek the pro- 
founder meaning of Christianity, a dissatisfaction with the 
prevalent Protestant ideal, an attempt to escape from its legal- 
ism and to subject the institutions of ownership to a more rigor- 
ous scrutiny. They endeavor to take cognizance of the system 
itself instead of accepting it as existing by divine ordinance. 
If they realize its merits they are not thereby blinded to its de- 
fects. The Puritan brought the individual to the bar of judg- 
ment and on the whole left the institution alone. But the 
opposite tendency has also its roots in Christianity. 

Nor should it be forgotten that in all ages there have been 
Christian groups intensely concerned with this problem of 
ownership. We have spoken most cursorily of prevailing ten- 
dencies, but even in the times of a rigid orthodoxy the free spirit 
of Christianity expressed itself in diverse ways. Religion Can- 
not be bound to any social formula. It has inspired both the 
most individualistic and the most collectivistic doctrines of 
property, and the adherents of both have been able to cite the 
Scriptures in their favor. It is here worth noting that though 
recent communism has shown an anti-religious bias, most earlier 
forms of communism claimed the authority of religion. They 
were generally of a simple ascetic character and are significant 
as showing how a strong religious conviction can transform the 
social order, often in curious ways contrary to the normal in- 
stincts of men. In fact there is much evidence to show that a 
communistic order can maintain itself only where its members 
are pervaded with a deep sense of religion. The religion is 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 101 


usually of a narrow pietistic character, as expounded to the 
faithful by some fervent apostle. 

To a thinker like John Locke, reflecting the views of his 
age, property was an absolute thing. It was a first principle of 
his political philosophy that the State could not rightfully take 
away any part of a man’s property without his own consent. 
Property was viewed out of its social relationship, as though 
it were purely created by the discovery and labor of isolated 
individuals or groups. It was sacrosanct and indefeasible, 
something that was ultimately a man’s own. This doctrine 
permeated the legal code which that age has bequeathed to us, 
and it stimulated the /aissez-faire economics of the nineteenth 
century. But its foundations, at no time secure, have been 
finally overthrown by the evolution of capitalism. 

It may seem strange that capitalism, with its strong individ- 
ualistic bias and its insistence on enterprise, should be regarded 
as destroying the principle of absolute property. Nevertheless 
itis the case. For capitalism separates income from ownership. 
The great agencies of production and exchange, factories and 
mines and railways and ships and all the rest, come to be owned 
corporately. No individual can point to them and say, This or 
this part belongs to me. As a shareholder he has a title to a 
proportionate share in the revenue, a right to a fluctuating re- 
turn which is very different from the substantive possession of 
a tangible good. Moreover that return is computed in money 
(or credit), and money itself is a social creation whose com- 
mand over goods is never constant. It depends on entirely 
unstable factors and is greatly influenced by the policy of the 
State. Thus a State by increasing or decreasing the supply of 
money or credit can redistribute wealth in a quite revolutionary 
way, without apparently touching the property of anyone. 
Wealth is so dependent on social conditions that every change 
in these conditions affects and alters its amount and distribution. 
Finally, no modern State could endure if it accepted the prin- 
ciple of Locke. The system of taxation, direct and indirect, 
denies the absolute right of property. It claims in the name of 
the whole community a certain control over wealth. It must 


102 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


find other principles of fairness than that each should contribute 
according to the service he receives, for there is no measure of 
such service. In the last resort it must justify its taxation in the 
name of the common welfare. Thus neither from the legal nor 
from the economic standpoint can there be found any absolute 
right in property. 

Nor again can we say that morally there exists an absolute 
right. Here, too, we have an idea which, though never valid, 
has been rendered meaningless by social evolution. While a 
man owned and produced by himself he might claim the 
product as all his own. But when all production is dependent 
on a most elaborate system of co-operation and division of 
labor, who is to say how much, or what, morally belongs to 
each participant? When a man claims to receive what he is 
“worth” on any absolute standard, he simply fails to understand 
his social and economic dependence. The hard parable of the 
laborers in the vineyard suggests at least this lesson, that no man 
can measure his absolute worth by a mere comparison with 
others. In the modern world this fact raises some of the most 
perplexing problems of ownership. Consider, for example, the 
relation of labor and capital. How much of the joint product is 
“due” to capital and how much to labore No man can tell. 
Without labor capital is impotent, and without capital labor is 
idle; so it is vain to ask how much either would produce without 
the other. The economic forces which in fact apportion its share 
to each are not proportioned to this unknown measure of their 
respective productivities. And in so far as social or political 
control is applied within this sphere, it must justify itself in 
other ways than on the plea that it renders to each what is its 
own. In the last resort it can justify itself only by a considera- 
tion of the common welfare and the means whereby this is to 
be attained. 

No impartial witness can deny that the present system of 
ownership involves some very serious evils. The power which 
wealth possesses is enormous and ubiquitous, penetrating to 
every corner of the social structure, and exercising a dominant 
influence on all social standards. It is the greatest power of 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 103 


the modern world, having means at its command which earlier 
ages never dreamed of. Every advance of science endues it with 
new weapons. Property, as has often been pointed Out, is power 
over men no less than power over things. In particular it is 
power over the minds of men, because it can influence or own 
the great new pervasive agencies for the expression of opinion. 
On this account the well-to-do find it hard to appreciate the 
instability, the haunting insecurity, the degrading dependence, 
the privation of the poor. They do not realize the slights the 
poor suffer, just because they are poor, the limitations that 
poverty brings. They do not realize the lack of incentive which 
robs their working life of meaning and often of hope. Perhaps 
most of all they fail to perceive the true evil of unemployment. 
That multitudes should be subject constantly to this menace, 
that they should at a few hours’ notice be liable to find them- 
selves thrown out of work, discarded and helpless, that their 
spirits and their meager resources should be exhausted in vain 
endeavors to find a livelihood while their families suffer want 
and their own powers decay—here is a tragic situation which 
calls for the most earnest thought and effort. But the prosper- 
ous are often so uplifted by their prosperity that they fail to 
perceive it. 

A fearless and unselfish estimate of these and other defects 
may surely be claimed as essential to the Christian attitude 
towards society. They should not at the same time blind us 
to what our present system has achieved. What Adam Smith 
said a century and a half ago is doubly true today, that “the 
accommodation of the most common artificer or day-laborer 
in a civilized and thriving country” vastly exceeds “that of 
many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and lib- 
erties of ten thousand naked savages.” The material conditions 
of a healthy and happy life have been wonderfully extended, 
and greater numbers enjoy in our age the benefits of security and 
reasonable comfort than ever in the past. In some measure, too, 
we have learned that we are all our brothers’ keepers, and we 
have established social means for the insurance and protection 
of the weaker against exploitation, against unremitting toil, 


104 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


against certain of the perils of modern industry. In spite of 
the glaring defects which remain, the conditions of life and 
work have been in a degree humanized—in other words, they 
have been brought nearer to the Christian ideal of brotherhood. 

What, then, can we conclude regarding the Christian attitude 
towards ownership?r Evidently no one institutional system is 
prescribed by Christianity. Christianity is not committed to 
any one social order, with which it stands or falls. Institutions 
grow and change and pass. For the most part they are not 
deliberately constructed at all but arise in response to changing 
conditions in the endless struggle of man with his environment. 
Any formula of construction would be alien to the enduring 
spirit of our religion, for every formula of construction is tran- 
sient. What concerns Christianity is the spirit that animates the 
institution. If that spirit is true the institution will shape itself 
to the spiritual need of the age. Take, for example, the care 
of the poor, on which Christianity has laid stress in every age. 
In a simple and relatively static society that duty can be 
fulfilled through the personal solicitude of each for his needy 
neighbor, through the method of charity and kindly aid. Ina 
complex and diversified society such as our own that method 
is quite inadequate. The spirit of Christianity must fulfil itself 
in other ways. The principle is the same, that the value of the 
person, even of “the least of these my brethren”, is supreme 
over considerations of economic advantage. But to secure it 
the social institutions of the age must be adapted to that end. 
So that everyone be saved from the soul-destroying pressure of 
helpless want, we must establish minimum standards of wages 
and conditions of work which provide for all the opportunity 
of a healthy and decent and responsible life. And in an age 
like ours this demands not only personal good will but also 
social control. 

The social responsibilities of wealth must be translated into 
terms of the age. It is stewardship that expresses the direct 
personal responsibility of the owner of wealth, as a source of 
power and service which he holds in trust. This responsibility 
is so hard that in the Christian teaching wealth is regarded as 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 105 


a supreme peril. Indeed at times the command is necessary, as 
that to the rich ruler, which bids an individual sell all that he 
has and give to the poor. In this case it might be maintained 
that the sacrifice was necessary not primarily for the sake of the 
poor but for the sake of the possessor. It is a case of limiting 
stewardship, where the trust is too great for the man. The 
teaching of Christ bids a man at all costs put the integrity of 
his soul above possession. 


CHAPTER X 
LAW AND THE CHRISTIAN CODE 


In practice the law usually lags behind the best ideals; how to make our codes 
more responsive to the Christian conscience is an ever present problem. 


IVILIZED society brings about, and its continuance and 
progress require, an adjustment of human relations and 
an ordering of human conduct so as to eliminate, or at 

least minimize, friction and waste in the satisfaction of human 
claims and attainment of human desires. Because these claims 
and desires continually overlap and often conflict, it becomes 
necessary to organize or systematize the satisfaction of wants 
out of a finite stock of the material goods of existence. As 
numbers increase, the areas of overlapping and the points of 
contact and conflict increase also. Hence the more crowded a 
society becomes, and the more complex its structure, and the 
more minute and specialized the division of labor it involves, 
the more is it dependent upon law, and the more elaborate and 
detailed is its legal system. Thus law is both a product and a 
prop of civilization. There is no law without civilization, and 
no civilization without law. Looked at with reference to the 
past, law is a product of civilization. Looked at with refer- 
ence to the present, it is a means of maintaining civilization. 
Looked at with reference to the future, it is a means of further- 
ing civilization. 

But law is only a specialized form of the social control 
through which civilization is maintained and furthered. Itisa 
systematic, ordered social control through the force of politi- 
cally organized society. We must not forget that the house- 
hold, the Church and other religious organizations, fraternal 


organizations, and social, professional, and trade organizations 
106 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 107 


also operate (through their internal discipline) to order the 
conduct of their members and restrain them from anti-social 
activities. At times one or another of these organizations has 
played an important part in the maintaining of civilization. 
For centuries such agencies have been subordinate and supple- 
mentary to the law. The State has achieved a monopoly of 
force as a regulative instrument. 

In the beginning we find an undifferentiated social control in 
which religion, ethical custom, customs of decision, and law 
are quite undifferentiated. Indeed it often happens in a rela- 
- tively primitive society that religion and the organized public 
opinion or moral sentiment of a kin group are co-equal with the 
law as agencies of social control. It may even happen that 
law is confined to a relatively narrow field—usually to the mere 
preservation of peace and order by putting down private war 
through a tariff of compulsory money payments to buy off the 
vengeance of the wronged, and a cystem of mechanical trials. 
In the Anglo-Saxon laws, the king’s dooms, instead of having a 
penalty clause or sanction, are often backed only by an ex- 
hortation to the king’s subjects as pious Christians to keep the 
peace and obey the laws. One of the earliest and most effective 
weapons of the law, namely, outlawry, is borrowed from the 
religious organization of society where it took the form of 
devotion to the infernal gods, or of excommunication. Again, 
in early law where promises as such are not usually given legal 
effect, a promissory oath involving religious sanction may be 
taken over by the law and made a legal formal contract. In 
general, an epoch in legal history is marked by secularization 
of the law. 

We may say that Roman law begins when a priestly tradition 
—in which religious rites, religious custom, ethical custom, 
political custom, customs of decision, and publicly declared 
law were fused in an undifferentiated mass—was turned into 
a lawyer’s tradition in which the precepts for governing human 
conduct and adjusting human relations, which had been estab- 
lished or recognized by the State, were set off from moral ideas, 
ethical custom, and religious rites. So also in Gane 


108 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Europe, the modern Roman law, which today rules half of the 
world, begins when a rising profession of non-clerical lawyers 
takes over the administration of justice and the practice of 
advocacy and of advising litigants. In England the common 
law as a system of law begins in the thirteenth century and 
develops along with what was in some sort a secularization of 
law, in that the non-clerical element came to predominate upon 
the bench, and a profession of non-clerical lawyers grew up to 
practise before the non-clerical judges. Again, in colonial New 
England the administration of justice was largely in the hands 
of the clergy. But the middle of the eighteenth century saw . 
the rise of a legal profession, and the history of American 
law, so far as New England is concerned, begins at this point. 

Because of the intimate relation of the beginnings of law to 
religion, some have. attempted to interpret the phenomena of 
legal history in terms of religion. They have thought of the 
history of law as that part of the realization of a religious idea 
which has to do with its manifestation in right and law. Indeed 
it has been urged that the Christian religion is an apprehension 
of things in their total coherence according to their highest 
cause and purpose, and hence that the modern law and modern 
State were to be understood in terms thereof. Likewise at- 
tempts have been made to interpret or explain the later Roman 
law in terms of the influence of Christianity and to explain 
many features of American law in terms of Puritanism. So 
far as they directed attention to what is often a decisive, even 
if indirect, factor in giving shape to legal precepts and institu- 
tions and doctrines, these religious interpretations must not be 
neglected. But the prevailing view has been that after the 
stage of primitive law is passed, religion has played relatively 
a small part in legal history. 

Three elements go to make up the whole of what we call 
“law”. First, the most obvious is a body of precepts or rules of 
law. Second, there is a traditional method of interpreting and 
applying legal precepts and of deciding cases, and a traditional 
technique of developing legal precepts, by means of which 
those precepts are eked out, expanded, or restricted and adapted 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 109 


to the exigencies of administering justice. Third, there is a 
received body of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas as to 
the purpose of law, and as to what legal precepts ought to be 
and how they ought to be interpreted and applied. These ideas 
are the background of all application of the traditional technique 
to the received or authoritatively established legal precepts. 

Consciously or subconsciously legal precepts, whether legis- 
lature-made or traditional, are continually reshaped and given 
new content or new application with reference to these ideas of 
the purpose of law, and of the nature and end of society. In 
the long run they are the dominant factor in law-making. It 
goes without saying that religion may well be a controlling in- 
fluence in determining this element of the law. 

How far Christianity influenced the development of Roman 
law from Constantine to Justinian has been much debated. It 
has been urged that in a stage of maturity law becomes so 
thoroughly a technical art as to escape the influence of moral 
movements. There is some truth in this. Christianization of 
the Roman Empire took place in a stage of legal maturity. 
The substance of the law had ceased to be formative. Except 
for details here and there, the influence of Christianity upon 
the law was to come later. 

Periods of stability and periods of growth alternate in legal 
history, and it is in periods of growth that religion affects the 
substance of law. In primitive law, and before the rise of a 
strict law, religion is often the largest factor in social control. 
In the strict law, on the other hand, law and morals are sharply 
differentiated, thd the influence of religion is indirect through 
its effect upon traditional ideals of the purpose of law and 
the nature and end of the social order. The strict law (as, for 
example, the Roman law from its secularization to the time 
of Augustus, or English law from the setting up of the common- 
law courts to the decisive establishment of equity jurisdiction) 
is succeeded by a period of growth and expansion in which 
there is an infusion into the law of moral ideas from the out- 
side. In this period an attempt is made to identify the legal 
with the moral, to make moral precepts as such, and because 


110 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


they are such, into legal rules. The classical Roman law (from 
Augustus to Diocletian), the law of Continental Europe in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and English law in the 
period of the rise of the Court of Chancery are examples. 
Following this period comes one of legal maturity, such as the 
Roman law from Diocletian to Justinian, and in the modern 
world the nineteenth century law. In this stage jurists are en- 
gaged in ordering and systematizing the materials developed in 
a period of growth, and law and morals are differentiated once 
more. Conspicuous and decisive influence of religion is to be 
found in the period of growth between the strict law and the 
maturity of law. In the Middle Ages a sharp line was drawn 
between spiritual jurisdiction and temporal jurisdiction—be- 
tween the jurisdiction of the Church and the jurisdiction of the 
State. Marriage, divorce, probate and administration of estates 
were matters for the courts of the Church. In time they were 
taken over by the courts of the State. But the impress of the 
church law, and hence of the religious atmosphere in which 
they were given shape, is upon these subjects today. Likewise 
down to the Reformation the clergyman divided the great of- 
fices of State with the soldier, and in the beginnings of our 
legal polity the administration of justice was largely in the hands 
of clergymen. This was true also in Continental Europe. On 
the Continent the more liberal doctrine of enforcing deliberate 
promises, without reference to the somewhat arbitrary historical 
categories of the Roman law, has its origin in the jurisdiction 
of the church courts to compel the Christian, on peril of ex- 
communication, to perform his promises as an upright man 
should. 

Liberalization of the strict law of medieval England was ef- 
fected partly through the equity administered in the Court of 
Chancery, partly through the absorption of the custom of 
merchants into the common law, and partly by the development 
of more liberal ideas on the part of lawyers and judges in 
the transition from the society of the Middle Ages, organized 
on a relational basis to the competitive individualism of the 
modern world. Equity began its course under clerical auspices, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 111 


and its measure of decision was found in the demands of “good 
conscience”. More than one idea of the law of the medieval 
Church affected English equity. Thus if property is mort- 
gaged or pledged with an express agreement that the property 
shall belong absolutely to the creditor if the debt is not paid at 
a time fixed, equity will disregard this agreement and will 
allow the debtor to redeem the property by paying the debt 
and interest. Also equity will not allow creditors to impose 
upon or exact from mortgagors or pledgors oppressive terms 
or conditions cutting off or hindering exercise of this right of 
redemption. These doctrines of English equity have their origin 
in texts of the canon law or law of the medieval Church which 
go back probably to legislation of Constantine. Also the views 
of equity as to the moral, and hence equitably binding force 
of promises and agreements, its eagerness to thwart fraud, its 
determination not to allow one man to be enriched unjustly 
at the expense of another, its insistence upon giving effect to 
defectively executed carryings-out of a moral obligation—these 
and many more characteristic phenomena of English equity 
show the mark of the religious thought and religious writing of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Henry VIII’s chancel- 
lor, in passing on the rights and powers of an executor, said to 
a lawyer who had explained to him that by the common law 
of England the executor was legal owner of the assets of the 
estate: “The law of this court is none other than the law of 
God.” For a time the court-of equity consciously endeavored 
to make morals into law. -Moreover, this meant Christian 
morals, and this development of equity took place in a time 
of religious awakening at a decisive epoch in the history of 
Anglo-American law. 

Another notable instance of religious influence is to be seen 
in the effect of the writings of the Protestant jurist-theologians 
of the Reformation, especially upon public law. The doctrines 
of individual responsibility and authority of the individual con- 
science, which they supported, were no mean factors in 
promoting that tenderness of individual rights, dislike of admin- 
istrative supervision of individual action, and system of checks 


ite AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


and balances which has been characteristic of our common-law 
polity since the seventeenth century. The strong ethical ele- 
ment in the philosophy of the jurists of the Reformation co- 
operated with the emphasis which the religious reformers put 
on abstaining from sinful conduct rather than on repentance 
therefor. Indeed one of the starting points of the legal and 
political philosophy that took form in the bills of rights in Amer- 
ican constitutions is in the writings of these Protestant jurist- 
theologians. It was one of these writers who took up the idea 
of a contract between ruler and ruled which had been a con- 
troversial weapon in the conflicts of temporal sovereigns with 
the Church during the Middle Ages, used it as the basis of 
political theory, and so founded the natural law which gov- 
erned juristic thought for the next two centuries. International 
law almost had its origin in the treatise of Grotius on the law 
of war and peace (1625), and the debt of that treatise to these 
jurist-theologians is obvious. 

Still more significant for American law is the influence of 
Puritanism. There are two periods in Anglo-American law in 
which rules and doctrines were formative, and in which, there- 
fore, the ideal element of the law—the ideas of judges and 
jurists and lawyers as to the purpose of law and what legal 
precepts ought to be in view thereof—was especially active in 
reshaping traditional legal materials, and in bringing into the 
law ideas from without and giving them legal form and legal 
authority. These periods were the end of the sixteenth century 
and the beginning of the seventeenth century in England, and 
the time of legal and institutional development in the United 
States that came to an end with the American Civil War. 
In the former, a system of law to go round the world with 
the English people and English speech had to be made on the 
basis of the medieval tradition. In the latter, it was necessary 
to overhaul the whole body of English law as it stood at the 
end of the eighteenth century, and reshape it in its details with 
reference to what was applicable to the geographical, social, 
political, and economic conditions of American life. The spirit 
of these times and of the men of these times gave color to 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 113 


American law. The age of Coke (attorney-general under 
Elizabeth, chief justice under James I, a leader in Parliament 
against Charles I, and the oracle of the common law) was the 
age of the Puritan in England. Indeed Sir Edward Coke’s 
“Second Institute”, which might almost be a text-book of Amer- 
ican constitutional law, was published by order of the Long 
Parliament. Also the period that ends with the American Civil 
War was the age of the Puritan in America. The Puritan doc- 
trine of a “willing covenant of conscious faith”, the Puritan 
doctrine of ‘“‘consociation but not subordination”, and the con- 
sequent individualistic conception that all legal consequences are 
to depend upon some exertion of the individual will, these have 
left their stamp upon American law of today on every side. 
Moreover the Puritan was a firm believer in enacted law. 
Under the Commonwealth in England there was a great out- 
burst of legislative activity such as had not happened before, 
and did not happen again until the legislative reform move- 
ment of the nineteenth century. Also colonial Massachusetts 
took the lead in putting the statute law in order some two hun- 
dred years before the revision of English legislation. Thus 
many of the characteristic statutes of the legislative reform 
movement in the United States were drawn under Puritan in- 
fluence, and religious ideas profoundly affected them. 
Today there are signs on every hand that we are entering 
upon a new period of legal development. In such a time re- 
ligion, as in the past periods of legal growth, must inevitably 
play a great part. The characteristic ideas of recent juristic 
thought, namely, higher valuing of the individual human be- 
ing, individualizing of the application of legal precepts, pre- 
ventive justice, recognition of the social interest in the individual 
moral and social life, more effective securing of the social in- 
terest in dependents and defectives, the tendency to stress the 
idea of service or of social function rather than the conception 
of rights, and the insistence upon social courses of conduct—all 
these things have great possibilities for the law of the future. 
In the development of a law for urban, industrial America 
through reshaping of the legal materials devised or given form 


114 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


for pioneer, rural, agricultural America of the last century, the 
ideal element in law will give direction to the growth of law 
as a whole and will guide in the working out of details. Here 
are great possibilities for religious influence. A new and fur- 
ther Christianization of the law is quite possible, and a revived 
and deepened religious feeling could not but hasten and further 
the work of making our law an effective instrument of justice for 
the crowded urban society of today and tomorrow, to which the 
creative activity and inventive resource of jurists must now be 
applied. 


CHAPTER XI 


GOVERNMENT AND CIVIC DUTY 


As the due and full development of human life can take place only in an 

ordered society, the Apostle Paul justly describes the civil power as “a minister 

of God for good to thee.’ A Christian civilization works for a government 

of such a character that under it human beings may attain their highest 
possibilities. 


HE proper relation between the individual and his gov- 

ernment is a matter on which men have long held diver- 

gent opinions. Whether the individual or the body 
politic is the true unit, and which of them ought to be devel- 
oped at sacrifice of the other if need be—these are questions 
which have served as the basis of an age-long controversy. It 
has been contended, on the one hand, that the welfare of the in- 
dividual and his personal liberty are the sole ends of all human 
organization and that government is merely one of the varied 
agencies leading thereto. Such being the case, it is argued that 
the individual is under no obligation to Participate in the oper- 
ation of government, inasmuch as his liberty to refrain from 
doing so is an essential part of that individual liberty which 
government is organized to secure. On the other hand, men 
have propounded and supported with equal earnestness the doc- 
trine that the chief end of government is not the liberty of 
the individual but the well-being of the whole community, the 
whole social organism. To attain this well-being it may become 
necessary to place serious limitations upon individual liberty 
and among other things to impose upon every citizen the definite 
obligation of sharing in the work of government. This is the 
angle from which compulsory office-holding and even com- 
pulsory voting are defended in various European countries. 


These two points of view aré not irreconcilable. Much of 
115 


116 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the divergence arises from a misconception of what personal 
liberty really implies. It does not imply the right of every 
individual to be a law unto himself. Nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago the Apostle to the Gentiles warned the Corinthians 
to “take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a 
stumbling block to them that are weak.” ‘The sacrifice of in- 
dividual discretion and desire for the advantage of the whole 
community does not result in the impairment of true personal 
liberty, but makes it real. Liberty cannot exist without rights, 
and rights cannot be assured without restraint. The rights of 
one individual cannot be secured to him without placing some 
limitations upon the freedom of action which other individuals 
would naturally exercise if they were permitted to do so. They 
cannot be assured to him without placing positive obligations 
upon the entire citizenship. So there is no incompatibility be- 
tween true personal liberty and the socialized ideal in govern- 
ment. It is through the attainment of the latter that the former 
can alone be realized. 

Now it is generally agreed that the well-being of the whole 
community is best served by the establishment and maintenance 
of a government which is democratic both in form and in spirit, 
in other words a government in which the whole adult citizen- 
ship is given a share. There was a time when men commonly 
argued that if a good despot could be found, a despotic mon- 
archy would be the best form of government. But that asser- 
tion was never true of civilized mankind, and today it finds few 
believers. It rested upon the assumption that administrative effi- 
ciency was the sole test of good government, whereas this is only 
one among many criteria and by no means the most important. 

Democracy is today regarded, virtually throughout the 
world, as the nearest approach to the ideal among forms of goy- 
ernment—and why? It is not by its nature the most efficient or 
the most economical form of government. It is not, by the ver- 
dict of history, the most stable form. But it is the form of gov- 
ernment that most nearly guarantees to all ranks of the people a 
fair and just consideration of their common interest. It is 
the form of government which most readily develops a firm 





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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 117 


place in the affections of the people as a whole and stimulates 
among them an interest in public affairs, No government from 
which the participation of the people is excluded can ever ex- 
pect, in the nature of things, to develop a citizenship of the 
best type. 

But the forms of government reach but a little way. They 
do not avail much without the spirit. It is the spirit of a 
democratic government, not its shell or mechanism, that really 
counts. “A monarchy in form may be thoroughly democratic in 
spirit, as Great Britain is today; on the other hand, a govern- 
ment which calls itself a democracy may be nothing but a thinly- 
veiled despotism. We should not be misled by the time-hallowed 
classification of governments into monarchies, oligarchies, and 
democracies. “Monarchy is the rule of one, oligarchy the rule 
of the few, and democracy the rule of the many’’—so runs the 
stock definition. But despite its great age and remarkable 
tenacity nothing in the whole range of political terminology has 
had scantier verification than this. The world has never had, 
at any stage, more than one form of government. This, as 
James Bryce once pointed out, has been the rule of the few, 

Monarchy is the rule of those few advisers who surround the 
monarch and exercise power in his name, oligarchy is the rule 
of the few who exercise it in their own name, while democracy 
is the rule of the few who exercise it in the name of the people. 
It is in the very nature of government that power shall be exer- 
cised by the few, for there is too much of it to be wielded by 
any one man unshared, and there would be chaos jf govern- 
mental authority were divided among an indefinite number of 
hands. So government by the multitude js a contradiction in 
terms. Were it conducted by the many it would not be gov- 
ernment. The basic problem of government is not to supplant 
the few by the many, but to determine how the few shall be 
chosen and controlled. All the practical issues of government 
culminate in this one. . 

It is a common mode of speech that a democratic form 
of government is one in which the people have a right to choose 
and control their rulers. This is true, no doubt; but unhappily 


118 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


we hear too much about the rights of the citizen in a democ- 
racy and not enough about his duties. Every right, of whatever 
sort, carries a corresponding obligation. The right to choose 
involves the obligation to accept public office when called upon 
to do so. The right to vote carries with it the duty of going 
regularly to the polls. The right to possess government by 
public opinion cannot be divorced from the obligation to share 
actively in the moulding of public sentiment. So it is with all 
the rights and duties of the citizen. They are in every case re- 
ciprocal. The citizens of a democracy who proceed on the 
assumption that popular government is a matter of rights alone, 
and not of responsibilities, will eventually have no rights worthy 
of the name. Among all forms of government democracy is the 
one that makes the largest demands in the way of individual 
self-sacrifice and activity. 

Now what are the outstanding obligations of the individual 
towards that government which he calls his own? First is the 
duty to accept office, even at personal sacrifice, when called 
upon. One might go even farther and argue that it is the citi- 
zen’s duty to accept candidacy for office whenever it appears 
that by so doing he can serve the public interest. “Too much 
cant and hypocrisy have associated themselves with the choos- 
ing of popular representatives in all democratic countries, It 
is a pleasing platitude that ‘“‘the office should seek the man, not 
the man the office.” In keeping with that idea, the public 
imagination is inclined to look for a sinister motive when any 
citizen openly and frankly avows himself a candidate for the 
votes of his compatriots. It is more tolerant of candidates who 
make a show of reluctance, even though the reluctance be noth- 
ing but a mere gesture. This attitude of the public mind is 
unfortunate, and so far as is practicable it ought to be changed; 
for it is inimical to the best interests of true democracy. 

In no type of government does the office commonly seek the 
man. The honor and responsibility of serving the people cannot 
ordinarily be had without active seeking. Why should any af- 
fectation of reluctance attend the quest? ‘There is nothing un- 
worthy in seeking office at the hands of a free people. ‘There 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 119 


is no need for any apology when a man does what he has an 
inalienable right to do. On the contrary, it is greatly to be 
desired, as a matter of public policy, that every citizen who 
thinks himself capable of filling an elective office should make 
known his willingness to serve. For it is only in this way that 
the people can secure the wide range of choice which they ought 
to have. 

We complain that men of the right sort are all too few in our 
legislative bodies. We attribute this to the fact that the people, 
at the polls, do not have candidates of large enough caliber 
to choose from. But this does not go to the root of the trou- 
ble, which is to be found in the disinclination of capable men 
and women to let themselves be nominated. Too many of 
them look upon politics as a vocation for those who cannot 
succeed in other lines, not as an avocation for the citizen who 
is making a success of his own private affairs. An avocation 
is just what politics ought to be. It is altogether inconsistent 
with the spirit of democracy that the function of representing 
the people should be professionalized. Democracy does not 
connote a government of laws alone, but a government of men. 
It is the human equation that will ultimately determine its 
success or failure. 

The second obligation of the individual to his government is 
the obligation to vote. This plain responsibility has been 
rather badly obscured by the common practice of calling the 
suffrage a right. People have “a right to vote”, we say, and 
sometimes we call it a natural right, or an inalienable right, 
or some other kind of right. But clearly the so-termed right to 
vote is not a right at all. A right is something vested in the 
citizen for his benefit or protection, and the suffrage does not 
come in that category. It is a privilege which is bestowed upon 
the individual, not in any sense for his own advantage but for 
the advantage of the whole community. Its scope is determined 
from that point of view alone. When, therefore, a man says 
that he has a “right to vote”, he does not mean what he says. 
He means that his government has bestowed upon him a privi- 
lege which it does not bestow on everybody. 


120 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


In bestowing this privilege it also lodges a responsibility, 
an obligation which is inherent in the very nature of rep- 
resentative government. The essence of representative gov- 
ernment is that it shall represent, that its actions shall be 
manifestations of the popular will. But it stands to reason 
that this popular will cannot be made manifest except through 
the positive action of the individual citizens, and if one citizen 
is entitled to decline a share in this action, by staying away 
from the polls, so are all the rest. That would speedily make 
an end to popular government. So, although we commonly 
speak of voting as a political obligation of the individual citizen, 
it is fundamentally a moral obligation as well. 

It is a moral obligation because there is imposed upon every 
individual the duty of promoting, to the best of his ability, the 
well-being of his fellow men. There is no system of ethics, 
pagan or Christian, in which this duty does not find recogni- 
tion. ‘There is none that upholds individual selfishness as a 
virtue or individual self-interest as the chief end of man. The 
duty of fellow-service is embodied in them all. Hence if free 
government is essential to the well-being of men in the mass, 
and if it cannot be perpetuated save by the action of the indi- 
vidual citizen, then this action becomes an obligation, moral 
as well as political—as clear a moral obligation as anything of 
the sort can be. We do not question the moral obligation of 
the individual to help protect his neighbor’s life, health, prop- 
erty, and peace of mind, when any of these things is endangered. 
Neither should we quibble as to the nature and basis of his 
duty when the action concerns the maintenance of a government, 
which is the greatest of all protecting agencies. 

Now this obligation to vote, despite the momentous issue that 
hangs upon its scrupulous fulfilment, is one which large num- 
bers of citizens everywhere disregard. In American communi- 
ties it frequently happens that fewer than eighty per cent of 
the qualified inhabitants take the trouble to have themselves 
enrolled as voters; and of those who become enrolled it is not 
uncommon to find thirty per cent or even forty per cent ab- 
senting themselves from the polls on election day. Thus it 





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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 121 


comes to pass that even under a system of universal suffrage 
the representatives of the people are very often chosen and con- 
trolled by a minority of the adult inhabitants, and sometimes by 
a relatively small minority. Where this is the case we have the 
forms of popular government without the fact, the husk without 
the kernel. 

There is a saying that every community has as good or as 
bad a government as it deserves—in other words, that good goy- 
ernment is something that must be earned. It cannot be given 
or bequeathed to a people. It will be earned to the extent that 
the citizens appreciate and fulfil the obligations of citizenship. 
A running stream rises nowhere any higher than its source; and 
an indifferent electorate cannot hope that by some miraculous 
intervention its representatives will tower above its own level of 
alertness, intelligence, and patriotism. 

Finally, it is the duty of the citizen to help in the moulding 
of public opinion, for it is through the action and pressure of 
public opinion that the rulers in a democracy are held to a 
strict accountability during the interval between elections. 
There is a common impression that public opinion is merely 
the opinion of the majority, something that exudes sponta- 
neously from the minds of the multitude and can be accurately 
ascertained at any moment by counting heads. But this im- 
pression is not well founded. Public opinion is a composite of 
numbers and intensity. The man who has definite convictions 
based upon a knowledge of the facts, and who earnestly voices 
these convictions at every opportunity, certainly counts for more 
in the moulding of public opinion than does the individual who 
simply inclines toward the opposite side and keeps his opinions 
to himself. Public sentiment on any question is not a spon- 
taneous exudation but a manufactured product—the outcome of 
leadership, propaganda, campaigns of education, and the other 
active efforts of a relatively few well-informed, earnest indi- 
viduals. Large sections of the people accept their opinions 
ready-made. The constant reiteration of an idea leads them to 
accept it as sound, It becomes stereotyped in their minds, and 
thereafter other ideas are readily adjusted to it. 


122 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Now there is a serious danger to democracy involved in the 
pressure of public opinion so long as public sentiment is formed 
in this way. It is a danger which can be minimized by one 
means only—that is, by the development of intelligence and 
discrimination among the people as a whole. An unthinking 
citizenship, one which accepts sophistry as gospel, is a menace 
to free political institutions. Until a man is ready to employ 
his own mental apparatus in winnowing the wheat from the 
chaff, in separating facts from phrases, a ballot is a dangerous 
weapon to place in his hands. Yet we have bestowed the suf- 
frage upon millions who have still to be taught the rudiments 
of good citizenship; we have given the future of democracy 
as a hostage to the spread of education. For that reason the 
obligation to help to enlighten those who are intellectually less 
well-equipped than himself, to diffuse sound doctrines of politics 
and progress, to labor earnestly for the moulding of a public 
opinion based upon reason and not on passion or prejudice—this 
is the broadest and most fundamental of all obligations that a 
free government imposes upon the educated man or woman. 

There are other obligations which democracy must exact in 
large measure from the individual, obligations too numerous 
and too varied to be set down in the pages of any book. What 
price freedom? The citizen’s duty to know his country’s history 
and traditions, to understand his government, to know the laws 
and to obey them, to respect lawful authority, to be loyal in ac- 
tion, word, and thought, to bear his portion of the common 
burden cheerfully, to fight and die if need be in the nation’s 
cause—these are but a few of the duties which form the price 
of freedom. This vision of his civic duty should ever be before 
the citizen’s eyes, for where there is no vision the people perish. 

Let no one be discouraged from the full performance of 
his moral obligations as a citizen by the feeling that he is only 
one among a host, a mere speck in the whirling maelstrom of 
national life. Influence is not a matter of numerical ratio but 
of earnestness, courage, industry, and (above all) a righteous 
cause. Once upon a time, as the Book of Genesis records, ten 
righteous men would have availed to save a great city, but 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 123 


there were not ten of them to be found. No man ever finds him- 
self alone in the battle for the right, although he must sometimes 
possess his soul in patience while others rally to the cause. He 
who betters the conditions of life in his own neighborhood is 
helping to build a city, and he who makes the city makes the 
nation. He wins a “victory that overcomes the world” 
Whether our national life is to be great or mean must depend, 
in the last analysis, on the quality of those countless neighbor- 
hoods, urban and rural, which are merely the nation writ small. 

The dream of a community in which every citizen would 
loyally fulfil his obligations to his neighbor is one of the oldest 
in human history. All literature is steeped in it. It was the 
theme of Plato, Virgil, and of the saintly Augustine. Prophets 
and poets, they wrote and sang of the city beautiful, the holy 
city, the eternal city, the city of light, the city of God. It was 
the angelic vision of the Christian seer on Patmos when the 
apocalyptic imagination discerned the Kingdom of God on 
earth, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven and stand- 
ing four-square: a place in which there would be neither hunger 
nor sorrow nor oppression, and into which there would enter 
nothing that defileth or worketh abomination. Somewhere, 
some day, to the sons of men, this dream of a great community, 
void of all injustice and iridescent with the glow of social har- 
mony, will come true. But the measure of its coming will be 
the readiness with which these same sons of men stand prepared 
to make individual sacrifices for it. 


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BOOK III 


THE NATIONS 


Since the nation ts the largest organized community, a theory 
has long been traditional that treats the nation as an “end 
in itself’, to be controlled only by rules of its own making. But 
such a principle is fundamentally inconsistent with Christianity, 
and the catastrophe of the World War has brought home to 
everyone the folly of national irresponsibility. A true Christian 
civilization must presuppose a Christian internationalism, the 
only problem is the best method of its creation. 










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Cra Reo Be 


THE UNITED STATES AND CHRISTIAN 
STATESMANSHIP 


On a scale of extraordinary magnitude the United States of America has in 
great measure solved some of the problems of internationalism by a union 
of states and a fusion of peoples into a single nation. But the isolation of the 
United States and the intricacy of its own problems have contributed to make 
it reluctant to look much outside its own borders; today it hesitates in assuming 
international responsibility. How much of this hesitation is selfish? 
HE foreign policy of the United States has vast signifi- 
cance for the whole world. Increasingly its activities 
and non-activities will affect favorably or adversely the 
efforts now being made to save mankind from the recurrence 
of a catastrophe similar to that of 1914. The degree to which 
its policies embody Christian principles will be decisive. 
What is foreign policy? It is usually interpreted as the 
established and generally recognized attitude of a country 
towards the major problems which face it in its relations to 
the rest of the world. It is not the same as foreign affairs, for 
these include many matters which cannot correctly be said to 
have attained the status of policy. Isolated governmental ac- 
tions, therefore, which are unrelated to and inconsistent with 
a clearly marked policy cannot fairly be taken as the basis for 
criticism. They may, however, clearly justify criticism of the 
administration responsible for them. All the more reprehen- 
sible are such actions if taken in secret without the knowledge 
or approval of the people. 
What, then, is a Christian foreign policy? ‘The consensus of 
opinion of those in responsible foreign offices or diplomatic posts 


would probably be: The rigid adherence by a government to 
127 


128 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


its treaty obligations even though this may seem at times to go 
counter to its immediate selfish interests; the just and fair treat- 
ment of weak or so-called backward peoples; the acceptance, 
wherever essential to eliminate an intolerable nuisance or to 
prevent international friction, of such responsibilities as are in- 
herent in trusteeship for those not yet able or willing to care 
for themselves. 

This definition obviously does not go far enough to describe 
a truly Christian foreign policy. Adherence to obligations, 
justice, fairness, even stewardship unless rigidly unselfish, are 
not enough. It would involve also neighborliness—and for- 
giveness. Its basis would be the oneness of mankind and the 
universality of brotherly love. 

But men with responsibility for governmental decisions re- 
ply: Few situations ever permit of an ideal solution; govern- 
ments usually must choose between two or more alternatives, 
not one of which permits, under the circumstances existing at 
the time, an absolute Christian settlement; constantly foreign 
offices must choose the least un-Christian policy. They then 
add: ‘Therefore criticism of any given policy which does not 
weigh the alternatives is certain to be misleading and unfair, 

Is then a truly Christian foreign policy possible? Many 
Christian philosophers and publicists say “no.” Some argue: 
The State is above the moral law; Christian principles are 
utterly impracticable, or if applicable would be subversive of 
the highest interests of civilization. Others, while admitting 
the desirability of the Christian ideal, look upon it as a delusion 
wholly without validity in the harsh realm of international 
relations, and like all delusions perilous, because it blinds na- 
tions to the dangers which encompass them, thus tending to 
make them the defenceless victims of ruthless neighbors. It 
is imperative, therefore, one of the leaders of this school of 
thought declares, that a system of national ethics correct the 
destructive influences of the universal ethics of Jesus. 

Does the general practice of nations in their relations to each 
other support this pessimistic thesis? Multitudes of men and 
women in all countries staunchly declare the inadequacy of a 





Elihu Root 


James Monroe 


SOME LEADERS IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 


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ly ¢ : agen? a 





al 


‘BUILDING AT MANILA 


, THE UNIVERSITY HALL 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 129 


policy of national selfishness. But it is the practice of states, 
not the protestations of righteous but impotent private citizens, 
which really matters. Tested thus, one can hardly deny the 
conclusion of L. P. Jacks that, “such an international ethic as 
can now be fairly said to exist is at best of the most elementary 
and uncertain kind, and quite inadequate to give moral direction 
to the powerful interests which come into collision and call for 
reconciliation on the field of foreign policy. . . . It is un- 
enlightened . . . and barbaric. One may doubt at times 
whether it exists at all.” 


I 


Until 1898 the people of the United States thought of them- 
selves as apart from the rest of the world. They had fought no 
European war since the episodic conflict with the mother country 
in 1812. Peace seemed to them as natural and normal as life 
itself. Absorbed in the epic task of developing a continent, 
they had very few interests abroad which involved possibilities 
of armed collision. Convinced that they were essentially 
different from Europeans, they were contemptuous of the 
trappings and glamor of diplomacy and military and naval 
establishments. They forgot that their peace, which has well 
been called “a peace without effort”, was but the happy result 
of an unusual and temporary combination of circumstances. 
The three basic conditions which made it possible were omi- 
nously but almost imperceptibly changing during the latter part 
of the nineteenth century. 

The geographic isolation of the United States was steadily 
lessened by the marvellous development of new methods of 
transportation and communication. 

Equally important, but less generally understood, the nation’s 
economic self-sufficiency steadily declined. More and more 
American agricultural, and later manufacturing, interests be- 
came dependent on foreign markets. 

Therefore the differences and rival ambitions of European 
states, which during most of the century were a decisive factor 


130 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


in frustrating plans of aggression against the United States or 
Spanish America, gradually began to be a threat to American 
peace. As the interests of the United States became more and 
more world-wide, it was involved, step by step, in what had 
heretofore been regarded as non-American affairs. Physically, 
economically, and politically, this country was becoming an 
integral part of the world. 

In the meantime Americans had not been as peaceful as they 
like to believe. Expansion across the continent was marred by 
wars and threats of wars. They took what they wanted from 
their weaker neighbors. The Floridas were virtually seized 
from a demoralized Spain. Texas, California, and the South- 
west were gained through pressure and war against an im- 
potent Mexico. Towards their stronger neighbors, Great 
Britain and Russia, they frequently, in territorial controversies 
with them, used a tone of extreme belligerency. 

The Monroe Doctrine was in the beginning, and has con- 
tinued to be throughout, a unilateral declaration of United 
States foreign policy. President Monroe’s pronouncement in 
his message to Congress, December 2, 1823, “Hands Off”, 
“America for the Americans”, though variously interpreted 
by successive administrations, has been consistently and vigor- 
ously maintained by all. It is one of the few foreign policies 
of the United States government of whose support almost uni- 
versal popular approval is certain. Intended as a defensive 
measure, the doctrine has been of vast value in protecting South 
and Central America against the fate which has befallen 
Africa, ruthless partitioning among the imperialist powers. 
Nonetheless, because of occasional acts of gross injustice, and 
more frequently, maladroitness and rudeness on the part of the 
United States, and because of the extreme sensitiveness of its 
southern neighbors, this policy has been frequently character- 
ized throughout Spanish America as a cloak for “Yankee im- 
perialism”. 

To what extent was the foreign policy of the United States 
during the nineteenth century Christian? It depends on the 
definition. Only the roughest estimate is possible. It was the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 131 


policy of a vigorous, aggressive, expanding people. That in- 
cident to its expansion it did not develop militarism after 
the fashion of European states during the same period was 
due not to fundamental differences of aims or ideals, but rather 
to the radically different conditions of the New and of the 
Old World. National enlargement, though unprecedented in 
extent of territory and growth of population, nowhere encoun- 
tered settled communities adequately defended. Hence with 
security unendangered by foreign troops, the United States 
escaped most of the evils usually incident to rapid national 
growth. If, therefore, its foreign relations of the last century 
were happily less tinged than those of Europe with the un- 
Christian elements of hatred, suspicion, and intrigue, one should 
remember that fate made a simpler, less tortuous, and more 
direct policy immeasurably easier for the Americans than for 
their European contemporaries, 


II 


But the “peace without effort” was suddenly ended. The 
war with Spain thrust upon the United States, wholly unpre- 
pared as a people, its initial responsibilities as a world power. 
This development synchronized with the scramble of the Euro- 
pean powers for colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence. 
Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines presented problems for 
the solution of which there were no American precedents. The 
lengthy and heated congressional debate that ensued—not on 
questions of detail, but on the basic question whether or not 
responsibility for these regions should be assumed—shows how 
unprepared our people were for these new obligations. The 
decision was different in the case of each territory. 

Cuba was recognized as independent, but the United States 
insisted upon qualifications which were embodied in and known 
as the Platt Amendment. This made Cuba in effect a pro- 
tectorate. But in exercising its reserved rights, the United 
States has shown unusual restraint and unimpeachable desire 
to limit its interference to the minimum required to meet its 


132 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


obligations. This relationship offers an excellent example of 
stewardship, with due regard to the rights and interests of the 
Cuban people. It is a sad commentary on the general standard 
of international relationships that this fairness in dealing with 
Cuba should stand out in such bold relief. 

Porto Rico was annexed. During the Spanish war no pledges 
were made in reference to it, as had been given to Cuba. It 
was not granted even a qualified independence, nor was it ad- 
mitted to statehood. Instead, a government very like that of a 
British crown colony was set up. It enjoys local self-government 
and an excellent administrative system. ‘Though Porto Rican 
leaders expressed the desire for statehood and the resulting privi- 
leges of United States citizenship, the masses of the people have 
few substantial grounds for complaint. 

The Philippines presented many difficult and complicated 
problems. Accepting the opinion that immediate withdrawal 
would result in something like anarchy and possibly conquest 
by a neighboring power, President McKinley decided on an- 
nexation. However, he then declared, “The Philippines are 
ours not to exploit but to develop, to civilize, to educate, to 
train in the science of self-government.” 

The vast advance in all fields of activity, industry, com- 
merce, agriculture, finance, public health, justice, self-govern- 
ment, made by the islands since the American occupation is 
undeniable. But most brilliant and admirable of all are the 
achievements of the American system of education. In 1900 
there were almost no children in school. Today there are nearly 
one and a third million out of a total population of eleven 
million. ‘The first building in every village is the school. 
The education ladder reaches from the primary school to the 
university. Among the teachers in the schools and the students 
in the colleges are those whose fathers or grandfathers were 
serfs, tree-dwellers, or head-hunters. Never before have a 
Malay people had opportunities comparable to these. 

Philippine affairs are now largely in the hands of the Fili- 
pinos themselves. ‘They have already developed a degree of 
self-government unprecedented among Eastern people under 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 133 


Western control. Democracy and republicanism are being 
tested as never before under similar circumstances. American 
influence, it may be fairly said, has been wisely and generously 
utilized to develop the best in the Filipinos. The results of 
this policy of really Christian stewardship are being anxiously 
watched in Java, India, China, and Japan. 

What of independence? Repeatedly American statesmen— 
Presidents McKinley, Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson—either by 
implication or without qualification have given this pledge to 
the Filipinos. The Jones Bill, passed in August, 1916, declares 
in its preamble that it is the purpose of the United States to 
withdraw its sovereignty from the Philippine Islands and to 
recognize their independence “as soon as a stable government 
can be established therein.” Therefore whenever the masses 
of the Filipino people demonstrate their capacity for self-gov- 
ernment and an unquestionable desire for independence, the 
United States seems morally bound to acquiesce. 

The cession by Spain of the Philippines and the Island of 
Guam gave the United States a new stake in the Pacific. It also 
hastened the annexation of Hawaii and the division of Samoa 
between the United States and Germany, with slight regard to the 
claims of the natives. Then followed the re-assertion of the 
United States’ claims to the Midway Islands and the occupation 
of the neighboring Wake Islands in 1900. In these steps there 
was little to differentiate the United States policy from that of 
other imperialist states. 

Notable, however, as a sharp departure from previous prac- 
tice in the territorial expansion of the United States, is the 
fact that in the treaty with Spain the inhabitants of the ceded 
territories were not, as in the territories previously acquired, 
“admitted to the enjoyment of allthe rights . . . of citizens 
of the United States”. Instead, the treaty declared that, “the 
civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants 
shall be determined by Congress.” ‘Thus the United States was 
for the first time acquiring colonies many of which because of 
differences from America in race and culture, are incapable of 
assimilation to the Union as states. It was becoming in fact an 


134 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


imperial power. Yet it was far from realizing the vast implica- 
tions of this new departure. It is only now beginning to under- 
stand vaguely its limitless opportunities and responsibilities. 


III 


All of Spanish America’s latent fear of “Yankee imperialism” 
was fanned into a flame of violent denunciation by President 
Roosevelt’s seizure in 1901 of the Panama Canal Zone. On the 
face of the facts the United States violated international law 
and equity. A movement was begun under President Taft to 
compensate Colombia. Finally, after ardent advocacy by 
President Wilson, $25,000,000 was paid to Colombia during 
President Harding’s administration. A few years later again 
in connection with the Canal the United States showed its 
willingness to right an international wrong. During the Taft 
administration a measure was forced through Congress ex- 
empting American coastwise shipping from the payment of tolls 
in the Canal Zone. This exemption was asserted by the British 
and believed by most American students to violate the Hay- 
Pauncefote Treaty, which specifically provided for equality of 
charges for the vessels of “all nations”. President Wilson ar- 
gued persuasively for the repeal of this exemption on the high 
ground of international comity. After a long debate Con- 
gress, in June, 1914, complied with this request and thus 
removed the reproach of treaty-breaking. 

The chronic turbulence and instability of certain of the Cen- 
tral American and Caribbean states has been the occasion for a 
disquieting extension of United States control southwards. 
Successively in Santo Domingo, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras 
revolution or insolvency, threatened or actual, has been fol- 
lowed by United States intervention. The United States has 
now withdrawn its forces from Santo Domingo and Nicaragua. 
There have been interventions in Panama and Cuba, authorized 
under treaties entered into by these two “protectorates”. It 
has been asserted that American financial interests either dom- 
inate or seek to dominate Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 135 


Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico. In the last 
four countries named there have been no United States financial 
agents in control either directly or indirectly. 

In the countries where governmental intervention has taken 
place it has sometimes been merely diplomatic; more often it 
has been covertly or avowedly military. This “creeping down 
the Caribbean” has been bitterly resented by the inhabitants of 
the countries directly concerned. It has been the basis of 
satirical denunciations of the “Yankee peril” and Anglo-Saxon 
hypocrisy throughout all Spanish America, while at home it has 
been sharply criticized as “dollar diplomacy” and an abuse 
of the rights of small nations and the principle of self-deter- 
mination. The government’s defenders reply: Obstinate dis- 
regard of national obligations, pecuniary and .otherwise; 
interminable disorder and bloodshed ; and consequent repeated 
flagrant violations of the rights of foreigners—all are intol- 
erable. The Monroe doctrine discourages if it does not forbid 
armed intervention by European powers to protect the rights 
of their nationals. Hence as the only alternative the United 
States must exercise “an international police power”. 

Power is so easily abused. The influence of the United States 
in destroying the Central American Court of Justice which had 
been largely its own creation is a particularly flagrant example 
of the misuse of power. It happened thus. For years follow- 
ing President Taft’s administration Nicaragua, as a result of 
the usual revolutionary difficulties and as a means of protecting 
American and other financial interests, was “supervised” by a 
small garrison of the United States marines at the capital and 
a warship in the port. Secretary of State Bryan in 1916 nego- 
tiated a treaty, with the government kept in power by forces of 
the United States, by which Nicaragua agreed to sell the United 
States the right to the San Juan River as a new canal route 
and the right to a naval base on the Gulf of Fonseca. Costa 
Rica protested that Nicaragua did not have the exclusive rights 
over the San Juan river. Salvador entered a similar pro- 
test in reference to the Gulf of Fonseca. The two protesting 
states took their case to the Central American Court of Justice. 


136 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


The decision was in favor of Costa Rica and Salvador}; but 
Nicaragua ignored this decision against it. The United States, 
not subject to the jurisdiction of the court, did nothing to per- 
suade Nicaragua, whose government it then controlled, to abide 
by the court’s decision. Costa Rica and Salvador—and the 
court—were helpless. The court soon ceased to exist. 

It should be added that a new Central American Court was 
set up in 1923—largely through the influence of the United 
States—modelled on the Hague Court of Arbitration. Also in 
1925 new treaties, based on the principles of the so-called 
Bryan treaties, were enacted between the United States and the 
Central American: states. ‘These provide for submission of 
differences which may arise to commissions of inquiry. 

Apart from isolated and obvious acts of injustice, is the extra- 
legal exercise of international police power Christian? On this 
there is no agreement, The majority answer is: Yes, provided 
the motive is unselfish. Such intervention, honestly and effi- 
ciently carried out, does not degenerate into a cloak for selfish 
economic interests, but rather it becomes a means towards the 
physical and spiritual rehabilitation of the native population. 
When this has been achieved intervention will be ended as in 
the case of Santo Domingo in 1924. But a vigorous minority 
replies: No, it is illegal and unjust, and hence un-Christian. 
Economic imperialism is the basic root of war. The United 
States, by its Caribbean policy, is gradually enmeshing itself 
in many of the worst imperialistic practices. 

Fairly to appraise recent relations between the United States 
and Mexico is excessively difficult. The Mexican people, op- 
pressed for centuries by Spain continued, even after nominal 
independence was gained early in the nineteenth century, to be 
the pawns of selfish political, economic, and ecclesiastic inter- 
ests. Revolution followed revolution until Porfirio Diaz 
established his ‘enlightened dictatorship”, which successfully 
maintained peace for a long period. Unfortunately, the vast 
physical developments of the Diaz régime—the building of 
railroads, waterworks, electric light plants, the opening of the 
mines and the oil wells, the influx of foreign capital, a stable, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 137 


currency, and gilt-edged national credit—did little or nothing 
to ameliorate the wretched ignorance, poverty, and servile de- 
pendence of the Mexican masses. 

The history of Mexico, from the overthrow of Diaz in 1911 
until today, has been the struggle of a new type of revolutionary 
leader to lift the people towards political and economic democ- 
racy. In this effort the property and lives of foreigners, many 
of them Americans, some of whom were guilty directly or 
indirectly of encouraging counter-revolutionary activities, were 
frequently jeopardized or destroyed. As a result, during this 
period the relations between the two countries have usually 
been strained and sometimes broken off altogether. Despite, 
however, what are according to customary standards consid- 
ered to be grave and repeated provocations, the United States 
has avoided, except in two instances, any substantial use of 
force. But its government has frequently used other forms of 
pressure, moral, diplomatic, and financial, to secure the accept- 
ance of its own interpretation of Mexico’s obligations. After 
more than ten years of friction, an honorable basis of settle- 
ment of outstanding differences was reached in 1923. 

Since then new difficulties have arisen. But friendly rela- 
tions between the two peoples are not likely now to be en- 
dangered. Extreme agrarian and labor radicalism in parts of 
Mexico will too probably continue to supply the reactionary 
economic imperialists, who possess and hope to possess 
interests in Mexico, with occasions for demanding intervention. 
But steadily the American people are coming to understand and 
sympathize with Mexico’s courageous attempt to lift the ap- 
palling dead weight of illiteracy and economic dependence 
which now crushes its people. Once this sympathy and under- 
standing is widespread, the United States will see that a policy 
towards Mexico concerned solely with protection of the in- 
terests of American citizens is wofully inadequate and un- 
Christian. And then we may confidently hope to see the 
recognition by the United States government of the elementary 
principle of justice: that the Mexican people should be encour- 
aged to share in the fruitful development of their incalculably 


138 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


rich natural resources. Then we shall be ready for a lofty yet 
practicable programme of Christian neighborliness. 

In the light of the United States’ troubled relations with 
Spanish America, what of Pan-Americanism? The conception 
of a community of interests and ideals adequate to drawing to- 
gether the states of this hemisphere is a beautiful aspiration. 
But as yet it is little more. Differences of language, race, re- 
ligion, cultural background, and political and ethical standards 
all tend to separate the United States from its Latin neighbors. 
In all these vital aspects of their lives they are vastly more like 
the Latin races of Europe than like the American people. 
Even from the point of view of physical distances many South 
Americans feel themselves nearer to Europe than to the United 
States. Pan-American conferences, the Pan-American Union, 
the interchange of visits by distinguished statesmen and scholars 
do something to break down the deep-seated barriers between 
ourselves and the nations to the south of us. Statements of 
Spanish American policy, such as the following by Secretary of 
State Hughes in August, 1923, are helpful: 

“We are aiming not to exploit, but to aid; not to subvert, 
but to help in laying the foundations for sound, stable, and in- 
dependent government. Our interest does not lie in control- 
ling foreign peoples; that would be a policy of mischief and 
disaster. Our interest is in having prosperous, peaceful, and 
law-abiding neighbors, with whom we can co-operate to mutual 
advantage.” 

But not until, by its actions, the United States dispels the 
Spanish American fear of “Yankee imperialism” will there be 
any chance for the essentially Christian ideals of Pan-American- 
ism to become realities. 


IV 


Towards eastern Asiatic problems the United States has 
followed a singularly consistent policy. This has been twofold: 
the Open Door—the demand for equality of commercial oppor- 
tunity, particularly in China and Japan; the Closed Door— 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 139 


Opposition to Asiatic immigration culminating in absolute 
exclusion. As Tyler Dennett has shown, though these two aims 
have been constant the methods of achieving them have varied 
so greatly as to give a false appearance of varying objectives. 

We think of the Open Door policy as one of altruism and 
self-denial. This is far from the truth. In essence that policy 
was initially, and has remained, a demand for “most-favored 
nation” treatment. That is, the United States has insisted that 
rights other than territorial, gained by foreign powers for their 
citizens in China, be granted also to citizens of the United 
States. At first concerned almost solely with commercial 
equality, the United States government now utilizes this highly 
adaptable principle to claim equality of political influence also. 

This enlargement of American claims in the Orient has been 
paralleled by the tightening of restrictions on Asiatic immigra- 
tion into the United States. Moreover several Western states 
have passed discriminatory legislation against their Oriental 
residents, in some cases affecting those who are American citi- 
zens. Of course in the Orient it is too often supposed that the 
Federal government is responsible for such legislation and has 
power to override it. Such discrimination added to the Ameri- 
can policy of exclusion has done much to weaken the moral 
prestige of the United States in the Far East. 

Then, too, the Pacific policy of the United States government 
has not always been conciliatory. Jointly with European powers 
and singly it has used military pressure against both China and 
Japan. It has been well said, “Americans in eastern Asia do 
not enjoy a single privilege which was not Originally secured 
either by intimidation or by territorial aggression.” In most 
cases they did not use force or seize territory; they merely de- 
manded from China and Japan equality of treatment with that 
granted under pressure to the other powers. They insisted on 
sharing the spoils—but with just a tinge of self-righteousness 
kept themselves aloof from the actual spoliation. This policy, 
even though through it they may have impeded the dismember- 
ment of China, scarcely deserves the name Christian. 

There are, however, other considerations which in fairness 


140 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


should not be overlooked. By the remission of portions of 
three indemnities—that of 1858 to China, that of Shimonoseki 
to Japan in 1863, and that exacted as payment for the Boxer 
uprising in China—the United States government has differ- 
entiated its policy from a too common ruthlessness of Chris- 
tian nations. Besides, in everything accomplished towards the 
amelioration of conditions in China, or for the betterment of 
relations between China and the powers, the United States has 
had an active part, often that of leadership. 

The Washington Conference of 1921, due largely to the 
initiative and courage of Secretary of State Hughes, offered 
an opportunity for reconsideration of all the relations between 
the powers and China with a view also to the removal of the 
increasingly disquieting misunderstandings in reference to the 
Pacific. The results were encouraging. The Four-Power 
Treaty made possible the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese 
alliance, which had been an obstacle to better relations between 
the United States and Great Britain and between the United 
States and Japan. The two Nine-Power Treaties and the reso- 
lutions in reference to China gave hope of the early elimina- 
tion of the worst abuses of extra-territoriality and of the other 
forms of control in China. 

But these hopes have not yet been realized. The temporarily 
improved relations with Japan, made more cordial by the gen- 
erous assistance of American people after the earthquake of 
1923, were rudely and unnecessarily jeopardized by Congress 
less than a year later. Its insistence that Japanese immigrants 
must be excluded, not by courteous and inoffensive diplomatic 
arrangements, as was most earnestly urged by Secretary Hughes, 
but by congressional fiat, outraged Japanese sensibilities. Thus 
by a single arbitrary action one of the most important achieve- 
ments of the Washington Conference was endangered, if not 
undone. 

Meanwhile across the Yellow Sea conditions grew steadily 
worse. ‘’he Washington treaties and resolutions, through 
which the powers pledged themselves to work with China for 
the rectification of the more obvious wrongs imposed upon it, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 141 


did not become effective, because of non-ratification by France, 
until July, 1925. Continued political disorders in China, jeal- 
ousy and differences of interests among the powers, due to a 
deep-seated unwillingness to surrender their extraordinary 
privileges, prevented until midsummer, 1925, any co-operative 
effort (except that of the Consortium, which effectively pre- 
vented political loans to the Chinese war lords) to ameliorate 
a desperate situation. Even then the powers were not stirred to 
action until the anti-foreign outbreak at Shanghai awakened 
the sluggish conscience of the Christian world. 

In the meantime China is awakening to a sense of the in- 
justices perpetrated against it. American ideals of government 
and of social life are having great influence. Nationalism now 
grows apace. A fast-spreading movement is gaining ground 
for the repudiation of all the special privileges wrung from the 
Chinese by the powers. China no longer in the old way fears 
or respects the foreigner. This process of disillusionment, be- 
gun before and developing during the World War, has been 
accelerated since the peace. The resulting new attitude, which 
frequently borders on contempt, extends even among the rank 
and file beyond the cities and the treaty ports into the hinter- 
land. It threatens to weaken, if not destroy, the work of 
generations of Christian missionaries. It attacks the Christian 
schools as centers of foreign influence. 

Certainly here is a grave challenge to Christian statesmanship. 


V 


Until the World War the United States, with rare exceptions, 
kept itself aloof from purely European quarrels. The few occa- 
sions in which our government took part officially in confer- 
ences of the powers only tended to emphasize our general 
practice of abstention. But the tragedy at Sarajevo changed all 
this. Vital interests of the United States became involved. 
Both groups of belligerents impinged more and more on the 
rights of non-belligerents, until by the spring of 1917 most of 
the important neutral rights had ceased to be respected. 


142 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


In the meantime the American people, appealed to by every 
conceivable form of propaganda, weighed their fateful de- 
cision. Who shall say whether that decision was or was not 
Christian? Certainly the great majority of the American 
people had come to believe that no less was at stake than civi- 
lization itself. Believing that, was it their duty to support “the 
right” against “evil incarnate’? The pacifist returns an un- 
equivocal “no”; the answer of the majority is “yes”. However, 
as disillusionment has replaced the enthusiasm and fervor of 
war-time, more and more Americans doubt that organized 
slaughter can ever contribute in any final sense towards right- 
eousness and peace among men. 

President Wilson’s nobly expressed idealism gave him, dur- 
ing the last year of the war, a dominant leadership of the moral 
forces of the world. But the Armistice of 1918 unloosed the 
passions of national greed, partisanship, and personal vindictive- 
ness. The Fourteen Points, which had been accepted before the 
armistice by both the Allies and the Central Powers as the basis 
for the peace, were violently attacked, after Germany sur- 
rendered, as visionary and unjust to the victors. The treaties 
finally imposed by the Allies in some respects violated the terms 
on which the vanquished had laid down their arms. One of 
the most flagrant of these violations was the inclusion in the 
reparation costs assessed against Germany of items, of more 
than doubtful legality, which doubled the total of its obliga- 
tions. 

The profound single achievement of the peace conference 
was the League of Nations. President Wilson thought this 
more than sufficient to compensate for all the compromises he 
was forced to accept. He saw in it the hope of the world, a 
step of vast importance towards a world organized for peace. 
But his political and personal enemies, the disaffected racial 
groups, those who sincerely believed the Treaty of Versailles 
iniquitous and the League impotent or entangling, all joined 
forces and, taking advantage of the President’s strategic mis- 
takes, defeated ratification. Then the Harding administration 
negotiated and secured ratification of the separate treaty with 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 143 


Germany. This gave the United States, in so far as Germany 
could do s0, all the rights it would have had under the Treaty 
of Versailles. Here again, as so frequently in the Far East, 
the United States claimed and secured equality of advantages 
without assuming commensurate obligations. 


VI 


Dur:ng the nineteenth century the problems of world organ- 
ization did not concern the United States. Its people asked 
only that they be permitted to work out their “manifest destiny” 
on this continent (some extremists were accustomed to say “‘this 
hemisphere”), and that elsewhere their essential interests be 
not jeopardized. Nonetheless the United States contributed 
substantially towards the practices and theory of the pacific 
settlement of international disputes. Beginning with the Jay 
Treaty of 1794, it has a long and honorable record of im- 
portant controversies submitted to arbitration. Relations with 
Canada have been a model of two nations, despite a common 
border of more than three thousand miles, living side by side 
amicably with none of the expense or dangers incident to 
frontier fortifications and armaments. The United States has 
urged consistently a liberal and enlightened interpretation of 
international law, seeking, except when itself a belligerent, 
as during the Civil War, to widen the scope of neutral rights. 
So far indeed had this process gone that, by the beginning of 
the twentieth century, many students of international relations 
Were optimistic enough to believe that only the further exten- 
sion of neutral rights was necessary in order gradually to abolish 
belligerent rights and ultimately war itself. 

The two Hague conferences, in 1899 and 1907, demonstrated 
the earnest desire of the executive branches of the government 
to build constructively. Secretary of State John Hay, in his 
instructions to the United States delegates at the first, admirably 
summed up his and President Roosevelt’s enlightened pro- 
gramme: “The duty of sovereign states to promote interna- 
tional justice by all wise and effective means is only secondary 


144 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


to the fundamental necessity of preserving their existence. Next 
in importance to their independence is the great fact of their 
interdependence. . . . The long continued and widespread 
interest among the people of the United States in the establish- 
ment of an international court gives assurance that the proposal 
of a definite plan of procedure by this government for the 
accomplishment of this end would express the desires and 
aspirations of this nation.” 

As a result, in no small part, of the United States delegates’ 
excellent work the first Hague Conference recommended arbi- 
tration “in questions of a judicial character and especially 
regarding the interpretation of treaties’; adopted a code of 
arbitral proceedings; committed the signatory powers, before 
resorting to war, to seek the good offices or mediation of one 
or more friendly and neutral powers; and adopted, based on 
a combination of the American and British plans, the so-called 
Permanent Court of Arbitration. This last, though marking a 
great advance, was far from what Hay had hoped for. It 
was merely a panel or list of available judges. As might have 
been expected, it has had no continuity and is in no real sense 
a court. . 

The second Hague Conference, though nominally called by 
the czar, was primarily due to the initiative of President Roose- 
velt. Secretary of State Root, in his instructions to the United 
States delegates, like Secretary Hay eight years earlier, out- 
lined cogently a praiseworthy programme. The delegates were 
always to be mindful that the object of the conference was 
“agreement and not compulsion”; they were to seek to limit 
the use of force as a means of collecting debts owed by one 
government to the nationals or government of another; they 
were to strive to increase the scope of arbitration; and most 
important of all, they were if possible to bring about “a de- 
velopment of the Hague tribunal (the so-called Permanent 
Court of Arbitration) into a permanent tribunal composed of 
judges who are judicial officers and nothing else, who are paid 
adequate salaries, who have no occupation, and who will devote 
their entire time to the trial and decision of international causes 


a 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 145 


by judicial methods and under a sense of judicial responsi- 
bility. These judges should be so selected from the different 
countries that the different systems of law and procedure and 
the principal languages shall be fairly represented. The court 
should be made of such dignity, consideration, and rank that 
the best and ablest jurists will accept appointment to it, and 
that the whole world will have absolute confidence in its judg- 
ments’. 

A draft plan for the organization, jurisdiction, and procedure 
of such a court was accepted in plenary session; however, the 
conference could not agree upon a method of naming the judges. 
The great powers would not accept the contention of the smaller 
nations that each State should be represented by one judge. On 
this rock the whole proposal foundered. Not until fifteen years 
later, again with the assistance of Elihu Root, was the idea 
brought to complete fruition in the establishment of the Per- 
manent Court of International Justice. 

The utilization of the machinery of the League of Nations 
for electoral purposes—the Assembly as representative predom- 
inantly of the small states, and the Council as representative 
more adequately of the larger powers—ended the previously 
unbroken deadlock and gave to the world its first system of 
international judiciary. 

During the interim between the two Hague conferences 
President Roosevelt negotiated, in 1904, a number of general 
arbitration treaties. These were so drafted that under each an 
indefinite number of cases might be referred to judicial settle- 
ment without requiring, as was necessary under most of the then 
existing arbitration treaties, senatorial ratification in each in- 
dividual case. Though these treaties specifically excepted from 
the requirement of arbitration all questions affecting “the vital 
interests, the independence, and the [national] honor” of the 
states concerned, and thus manifestly restricted narrowly the 
arbitral obligation, the Senate insisted upon amendments which 
would have required senatorial ratification before any case could 
go to an arbitral court. President Roosevelt, convinced that 
these amendments destroyed the purpose of the treaties, refused 


146 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


to accept them. The Senate thus blocked a small but encour- 
aging step forward. 

In 1911 President Taft tried to go even further. Under the 
terms of two treaties negotiated with France and Great Britain 
all future differences between the contracting parties involving 
a “claim of right”, and “‘justiciable in their nature by reason 
of being susceptible of decision by the application of the prin- 
ciples of law and equity”, were to be submitted to arbitration. 
Provision was also made for a joint commission to determine, 
if this were necessary, whether in any given case a difference 
was “justiciable”. These treaties received from the Senate the 
same summary treatment accorded the more modest efforts of 
President Roosevelt. ‘They were so drastically amended that 
President Taft abandoned them. Here again the Senate blocked 
a constructive international proposal. 

Analyzing the results of these and similar successful efforts 
of the Senate to limit the scope of arbitral procedure, and com- 
paring the resulting recent American practice with that set up 
in the Jay Treaty of 1794, John Bassett Moore, in an address 
delivered in 1914 but equally applicable today, drily observed: 

“As we are somewhat prone to boast of leading the van in 
the cause of peace, it may be worth our while to consider 
whether we should not gain a position far in advance of that 
which we now hold if we were to recur to the practice we 
followed a hundred and twenty years ago.” 

Warned perhaps by his predecessors’ unfortunate experience 
with emasculating senatorial amendments to arbitration 
treaties, President Wilson and Secretary of State Bryan worked 
out a different approach. It is commonly called the Bryan 
“neace plan”. This was to provide that all questions whatso- 
ever which failed of settlement by diplomacy should be sub- 
mitted to an international commission for investigation and 
report, pending whose consideration war should not be declared 
or hostilities begun. A year was suggested as the time to be 
allowed for an investigation and report. By the beginning of 
1924 ratification of treaties embodying this plan had been ex- 
changed with thirty states. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 147 


Theoretically admirable, these Bryan treaties have been little 
used. Much more immediately significant was the limitation 
of naval armament effected by the conference at Washington 
in 1922. Secretary of State Hughes’s unconventional frankness 
and daring in outlining a detailed radical programme in ref- 
erence to dreadnoughts won him the enthusiastic support of 
peace-lovers not only in the five countries directly affected, but 
throughout the world. But unfortunately it was an isolated 
attempt. The conference made no provision for its reassem- 
bling to consider the problem again in the light of new condi- 
tions when perhaps disarmament could be carried further, 


VII 


Obviously neither the United States nor any other country 
is today following consistently Christian standards. The record 
of the American people, better in many respects than that of 
other great powers, is nonetheless sadly marred by acts of 
unfairness and injustice. 

Many acts, however, which at first glance appear to fall into 
this category can often be explained and sometimes justified 
by the basic truism that statesmen are frequently forced to 
accept one of two or more alternatives, no one of which seems 
to permit strict adherence to a Christian standard. Therefore, 
before criticizing any particular policy or action as unworthy, 
one must always stop to consider what the alternative actions 
or policies were. Only thus can gross unfairness of judgment 
be avoided. 

The United States has been fortunate in the number of its 
statesmen with a fine vision of their country’s Opportunity and 
obligations to contribute towards world organization. John 
Hay, Elihu Root, and Woodrow Wilson each had a large con- 
ception of America’s duty, and each formulated concrete and 
brilliant yet practicable policies. But their finest and most far- 
reaching plans were thwarted by men of no vision or with a 
narrow provincial conception of America. The division of re- 
sponsibility between the Senate and the president for the control 


148 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


of foreign affairs makes obstruction easy, aiding powerfully 
those who would play upon the fears and selfishness of the’ 
people. 

These nationalists and “little Americans” have gained their 
devastating victories primarily because the Americans as a na- 
tion have been anxious to demand equality of privileges while 
loath to assume commensurate responsibilities. ‘They have been 
more anxious about their rights than about their duties, more 
concerned that no advantage be taken of them than that they 
do not take advantage of others. This selfishness is the more 
un-Christian in a people as powerful and opulent as they. 

The people of the United States have been and are inclined 
to be self-righteous. They think of Europe as quarrelsome, 
militaristic, and constantly preparing for new wars. They think 
of themselves as peaceful, devoted to arbitration, and opposed 
to the use of force. They forget that the basic difference be- 
tween themselves and Europeans is not that they are better than 
the latter, but that they are more fortunate. Secure to a unique 
degree, they do not appreciate their blessings. Europe, pain- 
fully insecure, feels poignantly the need of defence. The 
Americans have unthreatened frontiers on the north and the 
south and the two great oceans to the east and west. Every 
European State is within easy striking distance of a potential 
enemy. Until the people of the United States are prepared 
to admit that the differences between themselves and Europeans 
are those of circumstance and not of moral qualities, they will 
be unprepared to play a fitting rdle in world affairs. 


CHAPTER XITI 


THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND CHRISTIAN 
STATESMANSHIP 


Four hundred and fifty millions of human beings are united under the symbol 
of a common crown in that British commonwealth of nations which is today 
less and less contented to be known as an empire. It is an international 
organism unparalleled in history, with a prodigious complexity of responsibilities 
which demand every resource of wisdom and steadfastness, every aid that 
Christianity can lend. 
O greater moral change,” writes John Richard Green in 
his famous “Short History of the English People”, 
“ever passed over a nation than passed over England 
during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Eliza- 
beth from the meeting of the Long Parliament [say 1580 to 
1640]. England became the people of a book, and that book 
was the Bible. It was as yet the one English book which was 
familiar to every Englishman; it was read at churches and read 
at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which 
custom had not deadened, kindled a startling enthusiasm. 
- + . The whole moral effect which is produced nowadays 
by the religious newspaper, the tract, the lecture, the missionary 
report, the sermon, was then produced by the Bible alone. And 
its effect in this way, however dispassionately we examine it, 
was simply amazing. . . . The whole temper of the nation 
felt the change. A new conception of life and of man super- 
seded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread 
through every class.” 
It is not possible to understand the genesis and development 
of what is now often called the British Commonwealth of Na- 


tions without a clear realization of the immense and continuing 
149 


150 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


effect on British thought and action of the spiritual impulse 
which came to birth in the Puritan age. The invention of the 
printing press had put the Bible in everybody’s hands, and for 
the ensuing half-century religious issues dominated the thought 
of the nation. ‘Theology rules here”, Grotius, the great jurist, 
wrote of England in 1605. 

Nor was it religion as it related to the personal life of the 
individual that was most in question, as it has been in subse- 
quent centuries, but religion as it affected the relations of the 
individual to Church and to State. The Reformation had chal- 
lenged and destroyed the unity and absolutism of the Catholic 
Church in Christendom. It was inevitable that those who pro- 
tested against the claim of the Papacy to command obedience in 
matters of faith should go on to protest against the claim of 
monarchy to command obedience in matters of State. Yet when 
the Protestant had begun to cast off the authority of Church 
and king, where was he to turn for guidance in the exercise of 
his own private judgment? There was only one answer—to his 
Bible. And so the Bible came to be the one authority not only 
in the private life of the individual but in the pulpit and in 
Parliament as well. In Cromwell’s time it lay upon the Speak- 
er’s table in the House of Commons as the nation’s law-book. 


I 


In the sphere of public affairs, however, it was the Old Tes- 
tament rather than the New which exercised the dominant in- 
fluence, both in England and Scotland. There was plenty of 
“Sweetness and light” in religious circles. But in the great 
controversy of the day as to the form of government in Church 
and State, it was the moral law of Moses, the dealings of the 
Lord of Hosts with the chosen people, the terrible warnings of 
the prophets to the rebellious children of Israel, rather than the 
Sermon on the Mount, which was most in men’s mouths. Like 
all genuinely spiritual movements, Puritanism had awakened 
its followers to the activity and power of sin and evil in human 
affairs, unseen by the worldling, and it taught them that their 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 151 


mission was to bring about the reign of righteousness and the 
overthrow of wickedness by every means in their power. This 
was especially the case during the twelve years when the root- 
and-branch Puritans, under Cromwell, basing their power on 
the “godly” men of the Puritan army, were the government of 
the land and exercised authority as the mandatories of the Lord. 

The British people, of course, had been profoundly influenced 
by traditional Christianity before the Reformation. Their 
thought was also deeply penetrated, as was that of Europe, by 
the rediscovery and popularization of Greek and Latin litera- 
ture at the Renascence. It is not easy to disentangle what may 
be called the Catholic, the Protestant, and the Graeco-Roman 
strains in later British history, and we need not attempt to 
do so. What it is important to realize is that the religious ex- 
perience of the century in which Puritanism was the foremost 
spiritual influence in the land left a very definite impress upon 
British life and character, and brought about a difference be- 
tween the outlook of Great Britain and that of the greater 
powers of western Europe which has been a main cause of the 
emergence of the British Commonwealth of today. The Puri- 
tan movement, which was an extension of the earlier Reforma- 
tion movement, had almost no counterpart on the Continent, 
and such Puritanism as existed was early overwhelmed by the 
Counter-reformation, save in Geneva. 

Its principal effect was to awaken the British people to the 
fact, which lies at the root of all Christian teaching, that moral 
principles rather than intellectual brilliance or personal force 
is the true compass of humanity. Thus André Siegfried, a 
very competent French observer, in his book on “Post-War 
Britain” says, “Religion permeates the entire life of the coun- 
try to an extent absolutely unknown in France.” And Fran- 
cesco Nitti, formerly Prime Minister of Italy, has observed that 
the great difference between political life in England and 
in Continental Europe is that the appeal in British political dis- 
cussion is always to moral ideas, while in Continental political 
discussion it is to intellectual ideas. This does not mean that 
the British are specially active church-goers, or are particularly 


152 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


interested in theology, or unusually virtuous. They are none of 
these things. It is rather that they learnt in the Puritan age 
that in their private lives, their business, their politics, their 
sports, the standards to which they ought to conform, even 
though they often did not so conform, were moral standards, 
and that the leaders whom they could most safely follow were 
those who manifested moral character. John Pym has often 
been described as the most typically English of all the parlia- 
mentary leaders of Britain, and of him John Morley writes 
that, “he thought it part of a man’s religion to see that his 
country was well governed, and by good government he meant 
the rule of righteousness both in civil and sacred things.” 

The lessons learnt from this recognition of the supreme im- 
portance of moral principle are quite immeasurable. Two only 
need be mentioned here. The first was the profund re- 
spect it implanted in the British mind for the reign of law, 
and for constitutional as opposed to violent methods of reform. 
In the long struggle of the Puritans for freedom of religion, in 
the fight of Eliot, Pym, and Hampden to establish the respon- 
sibility of the king’s ministers to Parliament, in the failure of 
the Cromwellian absolutism, the English learnt once and for all 
that political freedom and the rights of the individual could 
only be secured by obedience to and enforcement of law, and 
that the law, whatever the outward form of the constitution, 
must be ultimately amenable to control by the sober moral sense 
of the community, as reflected in Parliament. 

The second lesson was the intrenchment of the idea of toler- 
ance in the public mind—that is, of the necessity for a clear 
delineation of the relative spheres of religion and politics in 
human affairs. The Puritans, having overthrown the arbitrary 
power of the Stuarts both in religion and politics, believed that 
it would be possible by governmental action to establish the 
Kingdom of God upon earth. Though his desire for the estab- 
lishment of parliamentary rule was very strong, Cromwell was 
so convinced he was the instrument of the Lord for the regen- 
eration of England that he could not endure the delays and 
compromises and the endless discussion which parliamentary 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 153 


government entails. He dismissed one parliament after another 
and finally governed as a dictator till his death. This experience 
of the “Rule of the Saints” has left a deep distrust in the British 
mind of all attempts to bring about moral reforms by legislative 
means. Legislation ought to register and consolidate a moral 
advance in the community rather than attempt to create it. The 
spheres of Church and State, in British judgment, ought to be 
kept clearly distinct, because freedom of conscience and the 
reign of law can only be combined if the law represents not 
the ideals of the religious minority, but the current judgment 
of the community as a whole. 

One other internal consequence of the Puritan epoch ought 
to be mentioned. On the one hand, it made possible the union 
of England and Scotland, in 1707, on a parliamentary basis. 
On the other hand, it left a religious division between Great 
Britain and the greater part of Ireland which has been at the 
root of all their later difficulties. 


II 


The career of nations, as of individuals, is determined not so 
much by their plans and visions for their own future as by the 
decisions which they make in those constant choices which are 
forced upon them by the inexorable necessities of life itself. 
The history of Great Britain since the Reformation has been 
mainly determined by the choices which it could not fail to 
make, once its thinking had been permeated by Puritan ideals, 
And they have had far-reaching international consequences, 

The Reformation, owing to the impetus which the idea of 
private judgment and individual responsibility in matters of re- 
ligion had given to individual initiative, gave rise to an unparal- 
leled activity in exploration, in colonization, and in the search 
for trade overseas. The resistance of the Puritans to the attempt 
of Archbishop Laud and Charles I to suppress dissent caused 
an immense emigration of serious and religious-minded people 
from England to America in search of freedom of conscience. 
It has been estimated that in the ten years alone before the 


154 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


summoning of the Long Parliament of 1640 no less than 
twenty thousand Englishmen crossed the sea. The adherence of 
Great Britain to the liberal and Protestant cause brought it into 
direct conflict with the great powers which supported the Coun- 
ter-reformation. The result of these three consequences of the 
Reformation, the rapid acquisition of overseas trading ports, the 
colonization of the eastern seaboard of North America, and 
that series of wars with Spain and France which ended in the 
withdrawal of France from the New World, was the first great 
expansion of Britain beyond the seas. 

This first British Empire lasted but a few years. It was in 
the main destroyed by the American Revolution. But the 
process of expansion soon recommenced. The earliest settle- 
ment in Australia was made in 1788 and in New Zealand a 
few years later. The number of trading stations and ports of 
call along the trade routes to the East once more increased. At 
the end of the century Great Britain became the head and front 
of the opposition to Napoleon’s dream of a military empire over 
all Europe and was left, at the end of that struggle, in possession 
not only of India but of South Africa, Ceylon, Mauritius, and 
many other islands. 

During the nineteenth century the same process went on. 
Emigration to the New World was continuous. In its effort 
to achieve security for its possessions and trade routes, in a 
world shrinking under the effect of steam, Great Britain took its 
full part in the scramble for Africa. In the World War the 
conflict with military autocracy left it in possession of yet more 
territory, in Iraq, Africa, and the Southern Pacific, control over 
which, under mandate from the League of Nations, was vested 
partly in the British and partly in the Dominion governments. 

It is a common belief that the expansion of Great Britain has 
been the consequence of a deliberate design persistently pur- 
sued. This is to misread the fundamental forces which have 
been at work. The expansion of Great Britain has been due 
to the same causes as the equally rapid expansion of the United 
States, first across the continent and then to Alaska, Hawaii, the 
Philippines, and Central America. In the case of Great Britain 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION {55 


the forces have operated with far greater intensity because 
of its contiguity to the Old World. Once it became ranged in 
opposition, first to the Counter-reformation and later to the 
great imperial absolutisms of Europe, it was driven, in defence 
of its security and of the freer civilization for which it stood, 
to resist their annexation of the immense resources of Asia, 
Africa, and America, and of the ports and harbors which con- 
trolled the highways of the sea. In that process its own pos- 
sessions have steadily increased. Similarly, wherever the native 
governments have been undermined by the impact of Western 
civilization or the effects of the wars between the European 
powers, it has found no option but to take charge of govern- 
ment. Other motives have undoubtedly played their part from 
time to time, but the expansion of the overseas responsibilities of 
Great Britain, as every scientific historian agrees, has almost 
always been against the desires of the government of the day and 
has been reluctantly accepted as being less objectionable than 
the alternatives, acquiescence in annexation by another power 
or the tolerance of anarchy. 

The importance of these facts does not lie in the justification 
they may afford for the British Empire. It consists in the proof 
they give of the immense influence which the Reformation had 
in determining the fundamental] features both of the modern 
world and of the modern British Commonwealth. Whatever 
may be thought of the conduct of individual British govern- 
ments or in particular transactions, there is no question that the 
control now exercised by the British Commonwealth over one 
quarter of the earth, and the predominant position now occu- 
pied in world affairs by the English-speaking nations,—the most 
significant thing that has happened since the break-up of the 
Roman Empire,—is in the main the direct outcome of forces 
set in motion by the Puritan movement. This religious experi- 
ence led to an unparalleled migration of population to empty 
lands, caused the growth of a free and democratic civilization, 
ranged the English-speaking peoples against both the Catholic 
and the political absolutisms of Europe. The result has been 
that practically the whole of the non-European Old World 


156 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


came under the influence of a system of thought and government 
based on freedom of conscience, parliamentary government, and 
the reign of law at the very moment when the discoveries of 
natural science were breaking down the old partitions which 
separated the families of men. 


III 


If Christianity, and especially that feature of it which came 
to the front during the Puritan epoch, had an immense effect on 
world politics and upon the expansion of Great Britain and the 
growth of the British Commonwealth, it had no less effect upon 
their internal life. John’s Gospel says, “For the law was given 
by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ”; and Paul 
observes that, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto 
Christ.” The popular recognition of the importance of the 
moral law was the necessary foundation for a more spiritual and 
Christian movement. 

This did not, however, immediately appear. The century 
after the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth was probably 
the most unspiritual in British history. The sensualism of the 
Restoration era and the stodgy complacent materialism of the 
first half of the eighteenth century, which were the reaction 
from the uncompromising standards of the Puritan age, reigned 
practically unchallenged. The results were a great feebleness 
in British policy, save during the period of Chatham, the re- 
newal of the royal challenge to the supremacy of Parliament 
under George III, and that blind and unprogressive policy 
which culminated in the American Revolution and the practical 
disappearance of the first British Empire. 

But underground the spiritual movement never died. Its 
vitality was kept alive by individuals in the Church of England 
and among the contemned dissenting sects, Presbyterians, Inde- 
pendents, Quakers, and others. In about 1739 it came to a new 
birth in the Methodist revival, inaugurated by John Wesley and 
George Whitefield and their “poor preachers”. The Methodist 
movement was first devoted to the personal redemption of the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 157 


individual. It was little concerned, as was the Puritan move- 
ment, with public affairs in Church and State. Yet the Meth- 
odist revival and the endless series of regenerative movements 
which have followed it in other denominations, all Christian in 
inspiration, have had far-reaching effects upon public policy. 

The first and most clearly marked effect was the awakening 
of the humanitarian spirit. This outcome of Christianity has 
been the chief inspiration of that immense philanthropic enter- 
prise which is so characteristic of modern times. It raised 
hospitals, endowed charities, and built churches for the poor 
and oppressed. It produced John Howard and the movement, 
begun in 1774, which reformed the atrocious conditions of the 
prisons. It started that stream of missionaries to Africa and 
Asia which is flowing in increasing volume still. It accom- 
plished, under the direction of William Wilberforce, the aboli- 
tion of the slave-trade in 1806, and the suppression of slavery 
itself throughout all British possessions in 1833. It was the first 
voice, though a voice largely ineffective until the middle of the 
nineteenth century, which protested against the appalling condi- 
tions under which the industrial revolution was herding the 
workers together in the towns and compelling men, women, and 
children to work. It has been the mainspring behind the gen- 
eral improvement in the moral standards of modern society, the 
diminution of coarseness and brutality, the spread of the zeal 
and provision for education, the passion for social progress and 
reform of later times. Though non-Christian organizations 
have also played their part, the greater portion of that vast 
effort, “which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy 
the guilt, the ignorance, the physical suffering, the moral deg- 
radation of the profligate and the poor, and of that passionate 
sympathy with the wronged and afflicted which is the note of 
the modern world”, has come from Christian sources. The 
leaders, Whitefield, Wesley, Howard, Wilberforce, Florence 
Nightingale, David Livingstone, Shaftesbury, John Chalmers, 
John Bright, and others, all drew their inspiration from the 
Bible and were active and professing Christians. 

The Evangelical movement, however, with its emphasis on 


158 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the equal value of every individual in the eyes of God, also had 
two very important effects on the structure of the later British 
Commonwealth. The first was the establishment as a cardinal 
element of British policy of the idea of trusteeship in the gov- 
ernment of dependencies. The second was the growth of 
democracy. 

The idea of trusteeship was first generally recognized at the 
Warren Hastings trial in 1786. In the earlier period after the 
age of discovery the theory had been dominant that colonies or 
territory overseas were possessions to be exploited for the benefit 
of their owners, and resolute attempts were made to try and 
keep foreigners from trading with them. The effect was seen 
in the gradual impoverishment of the empires of Portugal and 
Spain in America, and in the rebellion of the American colonists 
against British rule. In the case of India a new idea came 
into play. 

The chaos which developed in India as a result of the wars 
between Great Britain and France, and the decay of the Mogul 
Empire after the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, led 
to the gradual assumption by an English trading company, the 
Fast India Company, of responsibility for the government of 
Bengal. But once established as a government, the area grew 
over which it inexorably ruled. Its administration was stable 
and effective, that of its neighbors weak and chaotic. In its 
attempts to deal with the disorder and wars along its frontiers, it 
found itself constantly driven to expand those frontiers as 
the simplest road to peace and order. Before long, however, 
stories began to come to England of extortion and cruelty by 
the company and its servants, and agitation for reform was 
started largely by the same Evangelical forces as were combating 
the slave-trade. At length the question became a political issue, 
and Warren Hastings, the governor appointed by the company, 
was impeached before the House of Lords. History has largely 
vindicated the character of Hastings, but the eloquence of Burke 
and the widespread publicity of the trial brought home to the 
people what G. M. Trevelyan, the historian, calls “the new and 
vitalidea . . . that they had become, before God and man, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 159 


the trustees of helpless millions.” There was created, in the 
words of John Richard Green, “a general resolve that the se- 
curity against injustice and misrule which was enjoyed by the 
poorest Englishman should be enjoyed by the poorest Hindu.” 

This idea, unquestionably Christian in its Origin, touched the 
conscience of the nation. It was early recognized that a com- 
pany existing to pay dividends could not properly be left with 
responsibility for the government. In 1784 the political control 
of Parliament over the government of India was established by 
law. It was natural, once the responsibility for conducting the 
government had been accepted, that Great Britain should apply 
in its dependencies the same code of public morality, constitu- 
tionalism, justice, and tolerance that it had learnt and estab- 
lished at home in the seventeenth century. It has been these 
basic ideas, learnt in the Puritan revolution, which have been the 
mainspring and the secret of Great Britain’s long and successful 
record of colonial administration during the nineteenth century. 
The idea of trusteeship, too, has steadily spread. It has raised 
the standards of colonial administration, not in the British 
Commonwealth alone but all over the world, until today it is 
enshrined in Article XXII of the Covenant of the League 
of Nations, as the ideal which should govern all relations be- 
tween advanced and backward peoples. 


IV 


The influence of Christianity in producing the democratic 
movement of modern times is less obvious, because democracy 
is also the outcome of the Renascence and of the doctrines of 
the rights of man popularized by Voltaire, Rousseau, and 
Paine. But Christianity, in emphasizing the brotherhood of 
man and the responsibility of every individual for his own sal- 
vation, has immensely promoted democracy’s advance. Suc- 
cessful democracy is only possible when the individual] citizen 
has reached a fairly advanced level of education, public spirit, 
and self-control. Its permanent foundations in the world were 
not laid until the Protestant Reformation arrived, when the 


160 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


responsibility of the individual, not to obey authority because 
it was constituted but to think for himself and to act as his con- 
science directed, was finally recognized. 

Democracy developed markedly more slowly in Great Britain 
than in the United States. This was due partly to the excesses 
of the French Revolution and its outcome, the rise of Napoleon, 
which discredited the Continental theory of democracy based 
on the abstract rights of man, and partly to the inevitable pre- 
occupation of Great Britain with external problems, always the 
last and most difficult for a democracy to understand and 
handle. Moreover the fundamental thought of the British 
people has been more concerned that the laws and institutions 
by which they were governed should be wise and just and secure 
liberty to the individual, than that they should represent or 
reflect the opinions of the people themselves. The American 
philosophy of democracy (itself the outcome of the religious 
experience of the founders of the country) is that the individ- 
ual’s growth in citizenship implies share in the responsibility 
for the government of his country, and that it is better a people 
should govern itself badly and learn from its own mistakes than 
be well governed by an educated minority. This theory only 
made gradual headway in Great Britain. The first step from 
a parliament dominated by the aristocracy towards true democ- 
racy was not taken until the Reform Act of 1832. There were 
extensions of the franchise in 1867 and 1884. The grant of the 
suffrage to women took place in 1917. 

It was natural that democratic sentiment should grow more 
rapidly in the new settlements overseas which, like the United 
States, had few foreign complications to burden them; and 
Great Britain, taught by the experience of the American Revo- 
lution yielded to the demand for colonial self-government with- 
out much demur. Self-government was inaugurated in Canada 
in 1840, in Australia in 1851, in New Zealand in 1853, and in 
Cape Colony in South Africa in 1872. Only in Ireland was 
the demand for Home Rule resisted, with disastrous results for 
both sides. In North America, Australia, and South Africa, 
however, there were a number of separate colonies, and the grant 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 161 


of self-government produced local confusion. In each case, 
after a time, the representatives of the different colonies met 
together and drew up federal constitutions for their countries. 
Thus came into being what are now known as the Dominions, 
Canada in 1867, Australia in 1900, and South Africa in 1910. 

One of the results of the slow development of democracy in 
Great Britain was the British government’s undue readiness to 
do the work of administration in its more backward depend- 
encies instead of training the local inhabitants to do so for them- 
selves. In later years, however, under the influence of the ideals 
of the World War, self-government was seen to be the neces- 
sary complement to good government. In 1920 a constitution 
was enacted for India on the basis that responsibility for its 
government, beginning with the provinces, was to be transferred 
to the elected representatives of its three hundred and fifteen 
million inhabitants by gradual steps and in proportion as 
they demonstrated their capacity to govern themselves. In 
1922 the’ Egyptians drew up a constitution for the conduct of 
their own internal affairs, and the foundations for democracy 
have similarly been laid in the West Indies, Malta, and many 
other crown colonies. The older idea of a well-governed but 
static empire has given way everywhere to the idea of a 
commonwealth of peoples governing themselves or in training 
for self-government. Whether this experiment will be a rapid 
success is still uncertain, for democracy has never yet been able 
to maintain itself, except where Christianity has laid the neces- 
sary foundation of moral responsibility in a sufficient proportion 
of its inhabitants. 

The modern British Commonwealth of nations, in the growth 
of which Christian influences have pJayed so great a part, is a 
political structure unparalleled in bistory. Authority within it 
is now shared between Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South 
Africa, New Zealand, and Ireland (which became a Dominion 
in 1923). Though Great Britain is predominant in the partner- 
ship, the Commonwealth has no central government or parlia- 
ment. Each of the six units is a completely self-governing 
State, independent of the others and possessed of strongly 


162 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


marked national characteristics and of its own aspirations. 
Yet the reality and strength of their mutual loyalty, symbolized 
by the common crown, was proved by the extent and prompti- 
tude of their common action during the World War and at 
peace conferences since. What this unity of spirit between 
the nations of the British Commonwealth is, it is difficult to 
say. It is not unity of race; for French, Dutch, and men 
of half the races of Europe as well as Anglo-Saxons are 
loyal citizens. It is not nationality; for the sentiment of nation- 
ality is confined to the units of which the Commonwealth is com- 
posed. It is partly tradition, partly language and culture, 
partly common interests and institutions. But fundamentally 
it is the conviction that the Pax Britannica does for a quarter 
of the modern world what the Pax Romana did for the ancient 
world eighteen hundred years ago—the faith that the Common- 
wealth as it exists today secures peace, freedom, order, and prog- 
ress among four hundred and fifty millions of the sons of men, 
that it bridges the gulf between races, religions, colors, and 
nations scattered over the four corners of the earth as no other 
human institution in modern times has done, and that it stands 
for unity, freedom, and peace in international affairs. And is 
there any doubt that if this is true, and if the Commonwealth 
is destined to endure, it is precisely because in some degree it 
does embody and express some of those great ideals of right- 
eousness and humanity which Christianity has taught? 


vi 


What of todaye What influence is Christianity exerting on 
the British Commonwealth and its problems in the “post-war” 
world? It is clearly pressing for more fidelity to the moral 
law, for temperance, for social progress in a hundred ways. But 
what solution does it offer for the great new problems which 
confront the Commonwealth today: the issue of world peace, 
the race and color prejudice, the labor question, the distribution 
of wealth, industrial slavery, economic imperialism, democracy 
in industry? 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 163 


There is no doubt about the answer. The solution of these 
problems is still the “Law and the Gospel”—the combination 
of that firm grasp of law and principle possessed by the Puritans 
with the gentler and more spiritual Christianity of later times. 

The ending of international war can manifestly only follow 
the effective setting up of the brotherhood of men and nations 
on earth by the creation of some constitutional bond uniting 
them all under the reign of one just law. The separation of 
humanity into watertight groups, each self-centered and recog- 
nizing no law but its own will, is the fundamental cause of 
war. The sword of armaments will never be beaten into the 
ploughshare of peace until the unity of humanity is recognized 
in spirit and in law. The British Commonwealth of nations 
is one attempt to bring about that unity. 

It is the same with problems of race and color. Never have 
such active efforts been made to bring the peoples of the earth 
into friendly touch with one another, to break down the barriers 
of ignorance and prejudice, and establish understanding as are 
being made today. And nowhere are Christian forces working 
more earnestly than in the immense field for this work that is 
afforded among the races and peoples who live under the Union 
Jack. Similarly with the economic problems. 

Thus if we look back over the history of Great Britain and 
the growth of the modern British Commonwealth, the im- 
mensity of the effect of Christianity is very manifest. It is not 
always easy at any one time to disentangle Christian from other 
influences. Nor is it contended that the British peoples have 
lived up to their own standards any better than have other 
peoples. But it is clear that certain ideas have formed the char- 
acter and thinking of the British people, have moulded the 
institutions and spirit of the Commonwealth they have created, 
have exerted the most profound influence on the history of the 
world and on the place of the British Commonwealth within it, 
and that the noblest of these ideas have practically all been 
Christian in their source. 


CHAPTER XIV 


EUROPEAN NATIONS AND CHRISTIAN 
STATESMANSHIP 


Continental Europe, nominally a Christian territory, is still a union of 

disunited states, kept in tension by animosities of every kind. And in its 

territorial expansion European civilization has carried European rivalries, old 

and new, to the remotest bounds of the earth. The international problems of 

continental Europe, consequently, are the most pressing and important with 
which Christian statesmanship has to deal. 


T were folly to think of mankind in terms of brotherhood 
were brotherhood a human theory. For history, which is 
collective experience, has hitherto disclosed the nation in ac- 

tual operation as viewing mankind in terms of self-interest 
instead of considering itself in terms of mankind. Hence dis- 
putes and wars. Brotherhood is based, however, on the revela- 
tion of God as Father of the human race without distinction 
or preference of this nation over that or of this race over that. 
He is a respecter neither of persons nor of nations. Seeming 
preference was mistaken for actual preference, as in the case 
of the Jews, whereas the divine selection of this one nation with 
its peculiar bent towards religion was illustrative of God’s mind 
towards all nations alike. God’s purpose for all mankind is 
declared beyond dispute in the fact that He is our Father—the 
commonest, most frequent and widespread form of address to 
Him—and that we are His children. The children of a com- 
mon father form a common family. 

The world of Christians is not yet quite clear as to how far 
they can trust the practicability of the truth as revealed in 
Jesus Christ. A man of affairs shies at the suggestion that the 
next step for Christians to take is the application to the business 
world of today of the truths and principles by which Jesus 

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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 165 


Christ lived his workaday life. The idea evokes the excla- 
mation: That would be a declaration of war! Just so: because 
the purpose and the way of Jesus Christ are hostile to much that 
is characteristic of the thought and activity of modern com- 
merce. 

The political world is in like case. It is afraid of what the 
way and the purpose of Jesus Christ would do with it. This is 
true alike in countries where there is a union of Church and 
State and where there is not. In neither instance has it yet 
been made clear that, whatever the terms, the relationship 
strikes deep into the mode and end of political life. It connotes 
not merely a bald recognition of a} God, but in countries where 
Christianity is the dominant religion the definite application, 
also, of Christian ethics to every problem of State and nation. In 
countries where there has been a separation of Church and 
State, as in the United States of America, that separation does 
not mean divorce. It rather stands for the release of each from 
the danger of an embarrassing restraint that would hamper both 
were it allowed. It means untrammelled intimacy between re- 
ligion and the nation. It is in no wise a manifesto proclaiming 
a moral or religious holiday for politics and politicians, for 
diplomats or diplomacy. Indeed, if there is any one sphere 
more than another where the Christian purpose and way will 
count, it is here. The astonishment caused by a politician in- 
jecting Christian principles into a national legislature on a matter 
of international moment was great enough to echo round 
the world and be registered in literature. When a British 
under secretary for the air remarked that the Sermon on the 
Mount (that is, the truths and principles by which Jesus Christ 
lived, and then laid upon the conscience of all his followers) 
was the solution of armament problems, he drew forth the ejacu- 
lation, “Good God, sir! if we are to rely our air security on the 
Sermon on the Mount, all I can say is, God help us!” 

On the other hand, the necessity for corporate life to be gov- 
erned by an ethical code is signalized by the fact that some eight 
hundred organizations in the United States have adopted each 
its own code, often based upon the Sermon on the Mount. 


166 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


When we approach international relations the beneficent 
claim of Christ is laid upon the nations with no abatement. 
The truths and principles which governed his least relation- 
ships also governed his greatest. So it ought not to be a matter 
for amazement and dissent when these truths and principles are 
used as the key to international problems. However remote 
general assent to this may be, the Christian cannot debase the 
universal currency of the Christian ethic, cannot file down 
its sharp, incisive edge. A great statesman must first be a great 
Christian and a great prophet. 


I 


The inquiry which faces us here is to discover what of Christ 
there is, consciously or unconsciously, in the nations of Europe 
in their own distinctive grouping and in their relations to one 
another. Only in so far as nations are moved in their domestic 
life by Christian motives and are shaping their action by the 
Christian way of doing things, can they contribute to the Chris- 
tian character of diplomacy and foreign relations. 

Thus far no State and no nation has counted the Kingdom of 
Heaven the pearl of great price or the treasure hid in a field 
which Christ holds it to be. Consequently no sustained effort 
to secure it all hazards has been made. The Kingdom of 
God stands first in the estimate of no cabinet or government in 
the world, though there have been and are individual Christian 
statesmen. The first Christian axiom for international relations 
is that each nation should view the concerns of its neighbor 
with solicitude equal to that with which it views its own. This 
has never been done, and no concerted endeavor has been kept 
in view as possible until now. The chief reason is that it has not 
been held practicable—which is the worst arraignment of Chris- 
tian truth that can be made. The metes and bounds of Christian 
responsibility frequently are severely set by those who have 
selfish interests of their own which they wish to protect against 
depletion or injury. It is a common tendency to refuse recogni- 
tion to the paramount claims of Christian principle in some 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 167 


one department of life. The issue now is sharp in the realm of 
the political. Has a citizen the right to establish an ethic which 
runs counter to the expressed mind of the State? The answer 
is that the purpose and the way of Christ are final, and that the 
Christian can no more burn incense to the modern State than 
he could to the ancient Caesar. 

In other words, let the Christian ethic once be accepted by 
the entire Christian Church and it must rule the minds and lives 
of the entire Christian body in every relationship, individual 
and corporate. Naturally the last manfestation of the Christian 
way of life will be in the major groups of men until it includes 
the nation and dealings between nations. The supreme and all- 
encompassing charge of Christ was “to make disciples of all 
nations”, 

All nations up to the present stand under condemnation in the 
face of this searching test. In none of them is the Christian 
motive the dominating motive, in none is politics controlled by 
Christian ethics. The Kingdom of God is not to national life 
the pearl of great price. Indeed it is viewed askance by some 
as being a doubtful blessing outside a limited area. On the 
other hand, it is as leaven hidden in a measure of meal. How- 
ever laggard man has been in his search for the Kingdom, the 
Kingdom has not been laggard in its search for man. Slowly 
and relentlessly it makes its way in human affairs. Progress is 
not even along the whole line. Progress is not evident at all 
in spots and through periods of time; for progress is not in- 
evitable in that it is a co-operative affair contingent upon human 
effort just as truly as upon divine. People believe “sufficiently 
to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be governed” by Chris- 
tianity. This is true of Europe as it is true of the United 
States. If there is any one proof of the Fatherhood of God more 
convincing than another, it is this amazing patience with human 
life and the ways of nations as revealed by the history of man- 
kind. 

War is recognized to be such an enormity that every nation 
shrinks from being considered a participant in the guilt of hav- 
ing precipitated it. No State has been honest or courageous 


168 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


enough as yet to study the situation without self-favor and 
frankly to own its measure of responsibility. Disclaimers and 
the accusation of others, however, bear testimony to the growing 
sense in the common conscience that war as an institution is a 
crime and an outrage abhorrent to human reason and fatal to 
human development. 

War is being pilloried not only by individual moralists but 
by the affirmations and deliberate action of nations. When the 
Armistice of 1918 flung its silence over the thundering line of 
battle, it is safe to say that there was no active participant who 
would not then and there have cursed war out of existence as 
futile and brutal, had he known how. Lingering fear and sus- 
picion have caused a mild recrudescence of militarism, but a 
comparison of the collective mind of Europe today with that of 
any period since the days of Grotius marks a change of temper 
and purpose quite unprecedented. Justinian spoke in response 
to the universal instinct when he branded war together with 
slavery as being repugnant to national law. Grotius was as un- 
sparing in his condemnation of war as many a modern pacifist, 
and he reduced the justifiable causes of war to a minimum. 
At the same time, he prescribed on Christian grounds, as did 
Richard Hooker before him, international law as the antidote 
for war. The national mind of the day not only refused to 
acquiesce, but Grotius became an exile and nearly lost his life 
for conscience’ sake. 

In medieval times “it is certain,” said Sir Frederick Pollock, 
“that the Church could not have prevented Christian rulers from 
making war upon each other, or from appealing to divine sanc- 
tion for their opposite causes with an equal appearance of sin- 
cerity. The Holy Father himself, as a temporal prince, was 
often a belligerent, and his adversaries felt no diffidence about 
invoking their patron saints against him.” Even as late as the 
seventeenth century the idea of a nation having moral attributes 
was foreign to the civic mind. The Church up to then had 
done little to attempt to give the nation corporate Christian 
character. “My Country right or wrong” has been the ruling 
motto almost up to the present, and it is only now that Grotius 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 169 


is coming into his own. Today, as the discussion of war guilt 
testifies, nations accept moral responsibility as being inherent 
in nationality, and they seek self-justification with a passionate 
vehemence. It is a tribute to the divine in man that all but the 
brazenly reprobate either endeavor to establish their innocence 
under accusation or, at any rate, to present extenuating circum- 
stances which mitigate guilt. Today the consciousness of the 
guilt of war is in the way of becoming a commanding cor- 
porate conscience. 

Disarmament and the elimination of war are given as a 
promise and set as a goal in some of the earliest documents 
of the Christian heritage. No less than three outstanding states- 
men, who in their day and since have been known as prophets, 
proclaim without doubt or qualification that a day will come 
when the armaments of war will be beaten into the implements 
of peace and there will be no more war. Modern statesmen may 
demand war’s abolition on the score of social self-preservation. 
Christian statesmen reach after it as a triumph of righteousness 
and good will. The one is an appeal to fear, the other to cour- 
age. In any event, the abolition of war and the discovery of 
its moral substitutes belong to elementary ethics and are not a 
counsel of perfection. 

War is as technical a word as any in our vocabulary. There 
is that which it is not and that which it is. It is not the use 
of force but the abuse of force. It is an institution, by resort to 
which brute force, reinforced by guile and cunning, by skill, 
by the enlistment for destructive use of all the superb triumphs 
of science, is employed to establish the claims of belligerents. 
Force may be, nay, must be, the servant of righteousness. But to 
appeal to force and its myrmidons to decide moral and spiritual 
values is as perilous as it is mad and inconclusive. Strong as 
is the consciousness of right as a national military factor, it is 
not the deciding element in the clash of arms. 

There is another feature of war that cannot be too strongly 
emphasized. ‘Though it may begin as an instrument in the hands 
of nations, it inevitably ends in chastising all involved, whether 
victors or vanquished. “War is not like a litigation which ends 


170 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


in the settlement of a particular dispute”, says David Hunter 
Miller. Any war, in its settlement, goes far beyond the dispute 
which brought it about; every war opens up every possible 
ambition and desire of the victor. 

The nations of Europe and other continents which have or- 
ganized substitutes for war have, in so doing, put the institution 
of war under such stern condemnation as will ultimately outlaw 
war, to use the popular but effective solecism. ‘The Covenant 
of the League of Nations suffers from the disability of nearness 
and the wounds of odium politicum, which next to odium 
theologicum is the most vicious of weapons. Viewed as an ex- 
periment to organize the common desire of all nations into a 
co-operative substitute for war, it is splendid and daring and 
Christian. Its defects are analogous to the defects of all great 
historical documents, from Magna Charta to the Constitution 
of the United States. Its worth is in its endeavor to anticipate 
possible misunderstanding and hatred by creating a family table 
round which all the nations sit in the persons of their accredited 
representatives and deal with common problems by frank and 
open discussion. The full power of a League of Nations will 
never be known until all the nations of the world compose the 
League. 

The nations of Europe as a whole are moving up into a 
more Christian conception of inter-relationship. By a deter- 
mined effort to consider the national affairs of Europe in terms 
of the whole, by frank and open diplomacy, by substituting 
the international treaty for individual treaties and group alli- 
ances, by paying due respect to the interests of the smaller 
nations, by perpetual study and conference, by co-operative en- 
deavor—by all these is the menace of war at least being held 
in check sufficiently to enable men to visualize a family of na- 
tions and a world at peace with itself as a practical possibility. 
In the light of history this is not an unduly idealistic or hopeful 
temper of mind. It is just Christian. Without a goal in view 
quite superior to the demands of immediate expediency or the 
discouragements of momentary setbacks, there can be no actual 
progress. 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION LAI 


II 


What place and share did the Christian Church, by deliberate 
effort and by unconscious influence, have in shaping and devel- 
oping the nations of Europe? The answer to the question is as 
difficult as it is important. The fortunes of State and Church 
have been so intertwined since the days of Constantine that no 
clear outline of either is always discernible. It is significant 
and impressive that the early Christian documents, even when 
conceded the latest possible date, refer to the destined place of 
the nations in the Christian economy at a period when the nation 
could not be said to possess those features which in our day 
are counted essential to nationality. It was the business of the 
Apostles to make disciples of all nations. This was accepted 
from the beginning as a supreme and inalienable commission 
from God. The nations are to walk in the light of the Kingdom 
of God and in this way bring their glory and honor, together 
with that of their rulers, into it. 

The modern nation began to emerge when the power of mon- 
archy and the mind of the people as expressed in popular as- 
semblies became consolidated in an alliance or entente. The 
first nation in Europe definitely to take modern form was France 
in the second decade of the thirteenth century. Scotland was 
next in order of seniority. By degrees other nations appeared, 
and nationalized Europe began its stormy career. It was for- 
tunate that for four centuries before the corporate individualism 
of nationhood began to assert itself the ideal set for Europe 
by the Holy Roman Empire was unity. Behind all differences 
of whatever sort stood what was conceived to be the dominating 
Christian principle. Its restraining influence operated to curb 
the evils of self-determination and modify its centrifugal and 
disintegrating tendency. Mere nationalism stops short of the 
mark and carries as much peril as blessing—a world without 
a fixed orbit. The Reformation in its political character cham- 
pioned national self-determination, and in its religious char- 
acter promoted independence from outside central control of 
the Church within the State. It trusted to the inherent oneness 


172 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


of Christianity, which had been recognized from the very be- 
ginning, to act as cement and hold together the nascent national 
churches, an assumption not justified by subsequent develop- 
ments. Stress was needed upon the sanctity of the individual 
person or group, but not in a way that would lead to isolation. 
National churches, like the nations themselves, suffered from the 
fallacy of independence as the meaning of freedom. It was 
logical that often the Church should become little more than a 
phase or department of the State and share of its worst as well 
as of its best characteristics. 

In a revolt against the too great integration of uniformity and 
centralized authority Europe now moved in the direction of the 
disintegration of competitive individualism. Patriotism became 
the supreme virtue of the Christian and citizen, and the 
Machiavellian doctrine of subordinating every consideration of 
religion or morality to the seeming interests of the State pre- 
vailed widely. So the Church and the churchman grew accus- 
tomed to supporting any course of action formulated by the 
State, whether making for peace or war. Even when the al- 
liance between Church and State fell under suspicion, and the 
precept of a free Church in a free State came into practical 
effect, the docile loyalty of the churches to the political policy 
of the nation persisted. The Church was in danger of abdi- 
cating its moral leadership and often added the further fallacy 
of looking to the State for aid in the prosecution of its ends. 
Naturally the churches would then cease to have a common mind 
on the practical problems of the day. In consequence the power 
of the Church and of religion waned just when it should have 
been increasingly strong, and too often the State looked with 
indifference upon religion when not seeking to use it for its own 
ends. 

The penalty of uncurbed individualism is to split and splinter. 
It has been in rivalries between the fragments of Christendom, 
as well as in a sheepish following instead of a stalwart leading 
of national thought, that some of our worst calamities have 
originated. 

The two outstanding Catholic churches—the Roman Catholic 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 173 


and the Eastern Orthodox—did not escape the taint of pro- 
vincial nationalism, their sincere desire to the contrary notwith- 
standing. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, its 
continuance as a temporal power made against its catholicity. 

The nationalism of the Eastern Orthodox Church has its 
classic instance in Russia, where the Church became so identified 
with the czarist Russian State that revolution against the latter 
involved revolution against and persecution of the former. 
This has to be said in justice to indisputable fact, with full 
recognition of and respect for the extraordinary way the rich 
liturgies and superb ceremonial of the Eastern Orthodox faith 
express the deep mystical religion of the Slav. But we are 
considering now not the evangelical aspect of religion and the 
edification of individual souls, but the effect of organized Chris- 
tianity on national and international affairs. Were the other 
our task, it would be easy to speak at length and enthusiastically 
about the deep vitality of Oriental Christianity and the futility 
of any governmental attempt to suppress it. 

The Russian State, as we know it, would dispense, and appar- 
ently has openly dispensed, with Christian morals in politics. 
Any means that are effective to promote its end appear to be 
its policy. Of course, Lenin and bolshevism could only be what 
they were and are—the result of czars and czardom. It is not 
the Russian political creed as a whole that merits condemnation. 
That is a daring experiment quite within the rights of any 
nation to make. 

It appears to be characteristic of the Oriental churches to 
become vehemently nationalistic. Each is so jealous of its own 
individual character that harmony is difficult to establish and 
maintain among the various nationals of the Eastern Orthodox 
communions. The net result is that the Christianity of these 
nations is not conducive to unity and good will in the family of 
nations. 

Great Britain, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany have 
all had their share in coquetting with the “sick man of Europe”, 
and trying to use him for the purpose which at the moment they 
thought would be politically advantageous to their own interests 


174 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


—ultimately with abandonment of Armenia, that ancient Chris- 
tian people, to a tragic fate. All the Christianity of all the 
nations has done little more than pour oil and wine into the 
wounds after they are inflicted, without emancipating the vic- 
tim from the tyranny of a pitiless foe. The churches have done 
much philanthropically, but their combined influence on the 
nations of Europe and America has not sufficed to bring ele- 
mentary justice to Armenia. We should have been in different 
case had all European nations and churches entered into a cru- 
sade of protection and release. Armenia today is where it is as 
much owing to the national disunity of Europe as to the delib- 
erate machinations of the Turk. 

Up to the time of and during the World War organized Chris- 
tianity proved in the thought of many to be but a feeble and 
declining force in making national policy Christian and pro- 
moting family feeling in diplomatic and international relations. 
This was in part because the churches, rather by timidity than 
intention, passively accepted the policies of the State as their 
policies without close scrutiny of ethical values. In other words, 
Christianity had become nationalized rather than nations Chris- 
tianized. So it came to pass when the war-drum beat to arms 
Christian fought against Christian, each invoking God to aid 
him and too often praying for everyone but his enemies. Curi- 
ously enough—or should one say naturally enough?—when the 
lull of the armistice came the churches were chided for having 
allowed the unmitigated calamity of the World War and warned 
that should another war break out the guilt would lie at their 
door. And now, when honest effort is being made by the 
churches to treat the disease at its source and prevent a repeti- 
tion of the disaster, there are not wanting those who charge the 
churches with interfering in the realm of the State! 


& 


II! 


There are stirrings abroad which mark the dawn of a new era. 
The movement is too young as yet to have its portrait painted. 
But it promises well. Phillips Brooks once said: “Society 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 175 


advances the way a man walks—by always losing his balance 
and always regaining it.” The churches and the nations have 
tried, almost abreast, uniformity and centralization, and their 
endeavor has left its deposit of permanent worth. The aim 
here was to secure men their freedom by dominating them. The 
next experiment was in the opposite direction. ‘The sanctity 
of the individual man and nation and Church seemed to demand 
freedom through independence. This, too, has brought perma- 
nent blessing to mankind. Fora while the prestige and influence 
of the unifying forces lingered to keep the new and disinte- 
grating forces in check, but now they have ceased to operate. 
It has become clear that some compensating force must come 
to the rescue in order to restore balance to national and re- 
ligious life. 

With the attempt at the settlement of Europe after the World 
War new nations have come into being, as in the Baltic group, 
and new national alignments have been made, as in the Balkan 
group. Self-determination and nationalism have been quickened 
all along the line. Were this the only activity at work, the 
speedy end of all things would be as certain as the fate of the 
Kilkenny cats. But side by side with the centrifugal marches 
the centripetal. It is being recognized by a widening circle of 
men that the only hope for the individual nation lies in the 
reconciliation of its interests with those of other nations. Free- 
dom is to be had neither in subjection nor independence but in 
interdependence. Nations can reach their full stature only in 
association with all other nations. Partial association must 
meet the fate of all half-measures. What are alliances, unless 
they are formed subject to the interests of mankind, but the cult 
of the incomplete? They have all the evils of nationalism writ 
large. The League of Nations, whatever else it may be, is at 
least a symbol of that family relationship of the nations which 
can make the commonwealth of mankind a possibility. 

As with the nations, so with the churches—they “must learn 
or perish”. The unity of Christendom is no longer a beautiful 
dream; itis a vital necessity. It cannot be a return of the unity of 
the past. It must be a unity effective for the great purposes of 


176 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Christianity. The churches, no doubt, still have some common 
standing-ground; but it is diminishing in area. The last re- 
ligious census of the United States gave two hundred and two 
independent churches—and self-determination still progresses. 
Religious tribalism has broken up religious nationalism. 
Europe is more conservative and less inclined to split and re- 
split its churches; but the lines of demarcation are more dis- 
tinct and divisive. 

In the face of this situation the venerable Latin Church 
continues to proclaim unity by subjection and absorption. The 
other churches are looking for unity by interdependence, mutual 
understanding, and co-operation. Aside from what must be 
done in theology, the research laboratory of the Church, we must 
recover a common ethic to be applied by all the churches to the 
practical matters of the nations and their relations with one 
another. Federative efforts and world conferences are a begin- 
ning; but it is a far cry to that reconciliation of Christian forces 
which will place at the disposal of the whole fellowship the 
various treasures now used departmentally and competitively. 

Unless the churches speed up, there is a danger of the 
nations either out-distancing the religious forces in their struggle 
for unity, or else, what is more likely, of relapsing into confu- 
sion because of the failure of the churches to contribute dynamic 
which can be generated only by the like-minded in the pursuit 
of a common goal, and to which end Christ commissioned his 
disciples when he bade them make disciples of all nations. If 
the nations have not the light of the Kingdom of God in which 
to walk, they must walk in the dusk and not the dawn. 

The distinctive feature of the ideal of unity before the modern 
world is that its realization is in the hands not of a few but of 
the whole. No longer are the issues of peace and war to be de- 
termined by experts and diplomats and officials. The world- 
wide question is an intimately personal question. It is the 
integrity of the home which is first menaced when watr’s wild 
alarum sounds. Therefore, it is the business of the members of 
the home to determine the course of international affairs. Un- 
less the citizen has as his guide and enlightenment a Church 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 177 


with a universal ethic he cannot perform either his lesser or 
greater civic duties with good effect. This is the day of the 
people. The best known citizen, as the “unknown soldier” of 
every country proclaims, is also the least known—he who is 
quietly pouring his vitality into the veins of his country and 
mankind. It is his kind which is creating that intelligent public 
opinion which ultimately promises sometime in the revolving 
centuries to hold the intertwinings of international life in the 
embrace of the Great Peace. 


CHAPTER XV 


SPANISH AMERICA AND CHRISTIAN 
STATESMANSHIP 


Although made up of many nations, often with conflicting interests, Spanish 

America has a homogeneity and a self-consciousness of its own. We need 

the candid estimate of Spanish America’s interest and share in our common 
Christian ideals which is here presented by one of its own spokesmen. 


HE republics of Spanish America achieved independ- 

ence during a period characterized by revolutions. The 

United States and France had set them striking examples 
of rebellion, but the political principles on which these two 
nations had fashioned their constitutions were the result of their 
practical experience, ideas and ideals. ‘The institutions they 
established might have seemed new, but they were not exotic 
or alien to their temperament. It was not so with the Spanish 
American institutions. With an absolute lack of knowledge 
of and experience in self-government, the newly established re- 
publics of the south took it on themselves to assume the respon- 
sibilities of the republican’ form of government. It was a 
startling transition. This fact explains the unrest and the dis- 
turbances of the Spanish American nations: they were but the 
expression of a necessary accommodation to institutions derived 
from peoples politically better informed and more experienced. 
Their history during the nineteenth century was that of a great 
struggle between human instincts and ideal institutions. 

The efforts of the Spanish American states to obtain recog- 
nition for their governments abroad gave rise to their relations 
with Europe and the United States. They had stood together 
during the wars for independence, and this co-operation in the 


great enterprise had developed friendly relations among them. 
178 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 179 


At first they were clearly conscious of their unity and of the 
similarity of their destinies on the continent. They were wont 
to speak then of “American brotherhood”, but they did not 
live in harmony with this Christian sentiment. The passing 
interests of political parties, and territorial interests jn respect 
of their national frontiers, easily triumphed over the principle 
of fraternity. Disputes over questions of territory and inter- 
meddling in the political affairs of their neighbors were the 
causes of a number of international wars that reddened the sojl 
of Spanish America with blood. We have examples in the war 
between Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, on the one hand, and 
Paraguay on the other; the War of the Pacific; the Central 
American wars; the war between Mexico and the United 
States; and the Mexican conflict with France. 

These wars, as well as internal revolutions, gave rise to 
international claims, which in turn engendered animosity, 
estrangement, and hostility. 

With a semblance of justice, people have regarded this con- 
dition of things as one more evidence of the failure of Chris- 
tian civilization. Nothing, however, is further from the truth, 
For although it is true that these nations are Christian, their 
profession has not infrequently been superficial. In their in- 
ternational relations, they, like the European nations, have 
subordinated the moral and spiritual principles exalted by 
Christianity to the temporary impulses of political passions or 
material interests. The disorders have never resulted from the 
application of Christian principles but, quite on the contrary, 
from failure to apply them. When Christian principles have 
dominated international relations, the peoples of this hemisphere 
have given evidence of a nobler civilization. 

Fortunately for Spanish America, during the last twenty 
years of the nineteenth century, the principle of international 
arbitration—an essentially Christian achievement—began to be 
applied in the settlement of disputes that occurred on the south- 
ern continent; and from 1900 on arbitration and mediation have 
been the means adopted for the solution of all controversies 
that have arisen between the Spanish American states. 


180 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


In 1902, at the meeting of the second International Confer- 
ence of American States, held in the city of Mexico, the 
majority of the nations represented signed a treaty by which 
they engaged to submit all their future disputes to arbitration 
and to accept the award of the arbiter, whatever it should be. 

Soon afterward another treaty was signed for the arbitration 
of pecuniary claims that might arise between two or more 
American nations. Somewhat later Argentina and Chile agreed 
on a limitation of their naval armaments. 

Brazil submitted its boundary disputes with Bolivia and 
Colombia to arbitration, and it engaged with Argentina to 
settle all questions that might arise between them by arbitration. 
According to an agreement made at the third International 
Conference of American States, which met in Rio de Janeiro, 
all the nations of America accepted the principle of arbitration 
and that of mutual aid in furtherance of their common welfare. 
When the Permanent Court of Arbitration was established at 
the Hague, several of the Spanish American states signed 
treaties or arbitration with one another, as well as with the 
United States, they agreeing on the Hague court as arbiter. 
This act was the response of the American nations to the sum- 
mons to peace issued by the first Hague Peace Conference. 

For many years the republics of Central America were kept 
in a state of upheaval by petty revolutions, which have usually 
begun in neighboring countries, and which naturally have re- 
sulted in claims and strife between two or more of them. In 
1907, invited by Secretary of State Elihu Root, the five nations 
of Central America met in conference and drafted a series of 
treaties designed to put an end to their troubles. The most 
important of these treaties was that which created the Central 
American Court of Justice. This was an institution of the 
utmost significance; it was to take cognizance of the claims 
presented by any one of the nations against another and 
prevent by moral action any disturbance of friendly relations. 
During the ten years of the court’s existence it obviated several 
armed conflicts. This very fact accounts in some measure for 
its dissolution, and when the mandate of the court ceased in 














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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 181 


1918 at the expiration of the ten-year period, it was not renewed 
by any of the parties. 

The treaty that created the Central American Court of Justice 
was characterized by a principle new in the international policy 
of America: the right of intervention by one or more of the 
nations of the continent, indirectly or by direct mediation, to 
prevent revolutions or other civil disturbances in a friendly 
country. The Central American states engaged with one an- 
other not to recognize any government that might originate 
in a revolution until a popular referendum, according to the 
spirit of the constitution of the nation in question, should 
legalize the de facto government. This course of action was 
based on noble motives, and it was in harmony with a sense of 
brotherhood. A nation might have whatsoever government it 
should choose to adopt, but any government that originated in 
violence would be isolated by the neighboring nations, includ- 
ing Mexico and the United States, which had sponsored the 
Washington conventions of 1907 and which would assuredly 
have aligned themselves with the nations that opposed recogni- 
tion, pursuant to the provisions of the treaties. 

Although this lofty and humane principle as a basis of moral 
sanction in international affairs was new, this fact did not cause 
President Wilson to hesitate to apply it, both in the case of 
Mexico and in that of Costa Rica, and he refused to recognize 
a government sprung from revolution in each of these countries. 

If the principle of mediation by friendly states is laudable 
in respect of a war between two or more nations, it can hardly 
be less commendable in respect of civil wars. Recognizing the 
belligerency of the contending parties has been the custom 
hitherto. The new princip'e recognized the expediency of 
friendly intervention and mediation in the event of internal 
disputes. 

Such mediation was successfully exercised by the Central 
American Court of Justice. Its establishment was clearly an 
advance in civilization due to Christianity. 

On more than one notable occasion the Spanish American 
nations have perceived with absolute clearness the principles 


182 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


on which all their relations, as an integral aspect of Christian 
civilization, should be based; but when a dispute arises between 
material interests and party politics over the application of 
these principles, the latter triumphs, and the principles succumb. 

It may be said that Pan-Americanism has been a continental 
aspiration since 1825, in which year the first congress met with 
a definite plan for confederating the peoples of the New World. 
Simon Bolivar in the south and Henry Clay in the north were 
advocates of this plan for the association of the states of the 
continent in a single “amphictyony”—to recall the word used 
at that time—or international league. In the message in which 
President John Quincy Adams requested authority of the Senate 
to appoint delegates to this congress, to be held at Panama, he 
asserted that relations between the United States and the 
Spanish American peoples ought to be based on the “most 
cordial feelings of fraternal friendship”. 

It was from Henry Clay’s speeches that James G. Blaine 
obtained his idea of Pan-Americanism in 1881. The two 
main purposes of the plan of the secretary of state were the 
maintenance of permanent peace on the continent and the pro- 
motion of closer commercial relations among the several coun- 
tries of America. None of the fundamental proposals presented 
in the first conference of the American republics, held in Wash- 
ington in 1889, resulted in anything effective, except that there 
was afforded an opportunity for the representatives of the 
countries to become acquainted with one another and that two 
permanent institutions were established: The International 
Union of American Republics, and The Commercial Bureau 
of the American Republics (called since 1910 the Pan-American 
Union). 

The second conference, assembled in the city of Mexico in 
1902, voted its acceptance of the Hague convention, and it was 
the indirect means of creating the treaties to which reference 
has already been made. The third Internationa] Conference 
of American States, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1906, was con- 
ducted in a better and more comprehensive spirit of brother- 
hood. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 183 


Much was accomplished to clear the atmosphere of suspicion 
by the speech of Secretary of State Root, in which he said, 
speaking for the United States: “we seek for no other victories 
but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no 
sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves.” The fourth 
International Conference of American States, held in Buenos 
Aires in 1910, devoted much time to the study of the pro- 
visions of the previous conference and of their application to 
each country. In addition to the discussion of numerous ques- 
tions pertaining to commerce, finance, communications, trans- 
portation, consular and customs regulations, and of the adoption 
of resolutions relative to them, the conference voted its appre- 
ciation of the gift of Andrew Carnegie to the Pan-American 
Union and of his efforts in behalf of international peace; and 
it recommended an exchange of professors and students among 
the American republics. The fifth Pan-American conference, 
held in Santiago, Chile, in 1923, was characterized by “the 
spirit of international democracy”, to quote the words of its 
president, Mr. Augustin Edwards, former minister of Chile 
to Great Britain. Although an agreement was not reached 
as to the reduction or limitation of armaments, four conventions 
were signed. The first of them was a convention for the settle- 
ment of all disputes that might arise between American 
states. 

Several Pan-American scientific and financial congresses 
have been held. However, none of their generous conceptions 
have assumed the form of an international policy that would 
put an end to the jealousy with which some of the nations regard 
their neighbors, or to the suspicion widely entertained as to the 
imperialism of the United States. In the Spanish American 
countries, it is surmised by many that Pan-Americanism is 
a cloak to conceal a lust for domination on the part of the chief 
fosterer of it. 

The friendly atmosphere of the conferences has been pro- 
ductive of generous plans and rational and humanitarian 
treaties, but the national congresses of the several republics, 
being suspicious of the possible outcome, have abstained from 


184 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


adopting the treaties or have so amended them as to render 
them inefficacious. 

Elihu Root had this fact in mind when he delivered his 
famous address at Rio de Janeiro, and Woodrow Wilson was 
also aware of it when he wrote his message of December 7, 
1915, and when he delivered his speech at Mobile in October, 
1913. The words of President Wilson sketched the outline 
of a new type of Pan-Americanism, one to which Pan-America 
responded with the greatest manifestation of approval and sym- 
pathy. This address contributed in large measure to elicit a 
remarkable series of expressions of friendship toward the 
United States and assurances of fellowship and support on the 
occasion of its declaration of war against Germany in 1917. 
This spirit prevailed until the conclusion of the war. 

A similar feeling had united the sympathies of the Spanish 
American peoples when the words of James Monroe resounded 
through the continent in 1823. 

From the point of view of President Monroe, his message 
made provision for national defence only. The truth is, how- 
ever, that all the states of America were deeply interested in 
it, as it related to them as much as to the United States. The 
latter nation had enjoyed an independent existence of fifty 
years while the other lands continued to be the seats of colonies 
of European powers. President Monroe’s proclamation was 
therefore a generous gesture in behalf of the new-born republics. 
It signified that the United States stood ready to defend the 
soil of any American country whenever any of the principles 
of the Monroe doctrine should be attacked. 

In the important cases in which the United States has in- 
tervened in support of this doctrine during the period that has 
elapsed since its promulgation, its action has been addressed to 
the furtherance of peace and to the protection of the other 
American republics. 

The attitude of the United States in respect to the Anglo- 
Venezuelan controversy of 1895, as expressed in the energetic 
and altruistic action of Grover Cleveland, won the praise of 
the Spanish American republics. The dispute between Great 





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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 185 


Britain and Venezuela over the boundaries of British Guiana 
was approaching an acute state. Great Britain seemed about 
to violate the Monroe doctrine by taking possession of the part 
of the territory it claimed against the contention of Venezuela. 
President Cleveland ‘called upon the British government for 
a definite answer to the question whether it would or would 
not submit the territorial controversy between itself and Vene- 
zuela in its entirety to impartial arbitration”. The statesmen 
of the southern republics and the public in general understood 
that the attitude of the United States was prompted by ele- 
vated motives. Hence this intervention caused no resentment 
but, on the contrary, only satisfaction. 

Yet when statesmen of the United States seem to act under 
the pressure of selfish interests or with the arrogance of feudal 
lords the Spanish American peoples become distrustful and 
hostile toward the northern republic. Nevertheless, when its 
spokesmen pronounce the evangelical words of harmony and 
fraternal neighborliness, when they act with the consciousness 
of human brotherhood that characterized the good Samaritan, 
then all the southern peoples of America rejoice and are in full 
sympathy with the United States. 

For the purpose of obviating misunderstandings that arise in 
respect to Pan-Americanism, which some have used as a cloak 
for imperialistic designs, a group of men, well acquainted with 
the Spanish peoples and actuated by a sense of brotherhood, 
have conceived the doctrine of inter-Americanism, which is, 
owing to the generosity of its aims and the means it utilizes for 
their achievement, a doctrine of great promise. 

Inter-Americanism is essentially intellectual and fraternal. 
It seeks to comprehend, and to disseminate a knowledge of the 
thought and feeling of each of the American peoples in order 
that they be thoroughly understood by the others. It encour- 
ages an exchange of books and other publications, and a general 
acquaintance with the best thinkers and writers of each country. 
All its activities are conducted with a deep and sincere sym- 
pathy and with an intelligent respect for the customs and 
beliefs of Spanish America. There is in this movement the 


186 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


very essence of service, which is the most fruitful expression of 
Christianity. 

During recent years this desire to serve has woven a new bond 
between the Americans of the south and the Americans of the 
north. Extensive work in making numerous regions of Spanish 
America more sanitary has contributed to the improvement of 
conditions in town and country. The American Red Cross has 
accomplished much by its generous aid in Martinique, Chile, 
Costa Rica, and Guatemala. In all these undertakings we be- 
hold the flowering of a Christian civilization, and the knowl- 
edge of them is being heralded throughout the continent. The 
difficulties and hardships of one American nation are no longer 
regarded lightly by the rest. In times of calamity all hasten 
to give aid according to the measure of their ability. Such a 
spirit is a happy omen of what inter-American relations may 
become, in the course of time, with a fuller knowledge and 
a clearer comprehension of the solidarity of mankind. 


CHAPTER XVI 
THE LAW OF NATIONS 


The so-called international law of the modern world has been scarcely more than 
a collection of usually admitted customs and traditions, of little binding power 
even in times of peace and quite unenforceable in the event of war. To the 
Christian conscience such a state of affairs is intolerable; every Christian sym- 
pathy is enlisted for the development of a genuine code that may become en- 
forceable between nations as national law has become between citizens. 

WO of the very greatest forces to which modern peoples 

are subject are religion and patriotism. To the spirit of 

patriotism and to its practice we have for ages been wont 
to attribute the highest moral value. Deeds of self-sacrifice, of 
heroism, of devotion to the common weal, deeds of glorious 
resistance to the oppressor within or noble defiance of the ag- 
gressor without, are famed in story and song and in the traditions 
of every land and every tongue. 

And if we go back a little we may see a time when in 
Christian nations the government and the religion of the coun- 
try, if not united in one inseparable reality but mere divisions 
of the same system, were at least so intertwined that the devotion 
of the subject could not falter between them; and we find that 
in those times and lands the duty to God and the duty to the 
king joined those two sentiments of homeland and of heaven, 
the story of which forms so large a part of all the history of the 
human race. 

We need not here pass in review any of those centuries of 
Europe in which common religious opinion (as in the Crusades) 
or diverse religious claims (as in the Middle Ages) played so 
large a part in international relations and events. But we 
may observe that then as always the final tribunals of decision 
were found in the sentiment of the peoples. Theirs was not 

187 


188 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


an articulate sentiment, not an educated or informed sentiment, 
but none the less a sentiment—a feeling in each land for their 
own institutions and for their own creed which was behind the 
monarch who ruled at home and who ordered policies abroad. 
And regardless of any second-thought logic of our own day, 
we must remember that a feeling with two such strands, woven 
together, was not to be questioned. When the cause of one’s 
country was of necessity divinely just, when the enemy was cer- 
tainly arrayed against God Himself, who could dally or doubt? 
With such beliefs, the Almighty was regarded as necessarily 
enlisted on one side. 

Of course history shows that the system based on a senti- 
ment; in those earlier days, very often did not proceed to a 
logical conclusion in its operation. Perhaps we may think of 
the Crusades as being logical in this sense. But when the 
complete religious supremacy of the Bishop of Rome could be 
questioned, when there came to be more than one Christian 
sect in the same nation, and more particularly when there came 
to be a “heretic”, in the one sense or the other, on the throne— 
then the national decision ceased to be such a simple thing; 
but even so there was for a time no great change in the structure 
itself. Perhaps that part of its foundation which was patriotism 
grew somewhat at the expense of that other part which was 
religion; but this was all. It still remained apparent that in 
an international matter one’s country could not be wrong; 
perhaps it was at times somewhat less right from a religious, 
and somewhat more right from a patriotic standpoint, but with 
its total right not diminished. 

However, when soul-shaking religious changes were experi- 
enced and new theories of government were raised everywhere 
and debated in Europe by the ablest thinkers, a recasting of the 
theory of international relations from the intellectual side be- 
came inevitable. Not that this was wholly novel from the 
point of view of intellectual history; much of it was a return to 
older and largely forgotten ideas. It was inevitable that the 
moral and humanitarian aspects of war itself and of the conduct 
of war should be a theme of discussion in the Christian Church 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 189 


from the days of the Fathers. Many of their ideas indeed were 
adopted by the later writers on law. 


I 


Grotius argued three centuries ago that the crime of a State 
is as wicked as the crime of a citizen, that a State may be a 
“robber” or a “bandit”; and he declared that the then enemy 
of Holland was a criminal, a criminal that ought to be re- 
strained, if not punished, by other states. Grotius further 
insisted that the power of making war was nothing more nor 
less than the duty of dealing with a criminal State, and accord- 
ing to his doctrine all this followed from international law as 
a part of divine law. 

Of course from a personal point of view it was not unnatural 
for Grotius to maintain such a position, for he wrote as a 
Hollander. There was nothing new, in a sense, in the idea that 
the other side was wrong. The novel element introduced by 
Grotius was this: instead of arguing that religion and patriot- 
ism necessitated the conclusion that the cause of one’s country 
must be approved by God as just, he contended that there was 
an international (or universal) law of right and wrong, a part 
of the divine law itself. 

This certainly seemed most dangerous, from the point of 
view of the settled order. For if the thesis of Grotius was 
admitted then not only might the Dutch people think that the 
enemy was wrong from the international standpoint, but the 
people of the enemy State might properly and even devoutly 
come to the same conclusion. 

Such a possibility as this might well shake to its foundations 
the national consequences of patriotism itself, after the religious 
certitude of national action had gone; it might even, if carried 
farther, lead to a conflict between the doctrines of religion 
and those of patriotism. 

Hence the conclusions of Grotius could not be adopted. 
Nonetheless they had to be met and at least verbally reconciled 
with the intellectual growth of international law, in order to 


190 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


prevent any questioning at home of the attitude and acts of one’s 
country abroad. Such a necessary development was brilliantly 
achieved by later writers. They did not merely admit, they 
insisted that there was an international law of justice between 
states. They agreed that Grotius had made no mistake in pro- 
pounding this view or in his further claim that such interna- 
tional law was a part of the divine law. But, they added, this 
international law necessarily includes the undoubted doctrine of 
State sovereignty, and this sovereignty always includes the pos- 
sibility of war. So the doctrine of sovereignty took the place of 
the disappearing religious elements as the foundation of national 
decisions. 

Admittedly the State had duties under international law; 
true it was that the State should not violate these duties, and 
that there were rights of other States which should legally be 
respected; but nonetheless there remained in every State the 
sovereign right of carrying on war if and when it saw fit. The 
war might be “unjust”, but this war right of sovereignty could 
not be challenged, even by a State attacked, as E. Vattel puts the 
case. And this was and remained the accepted legal and inter- 
national doctrine and practice. Let us see where it leaves the 
question. 

The right of a State to its own territory, for example, is 
sacred under international law; accordingly a demand for a 
cession of part of that territory may be rejected as contrary 
to international law; but a war by the State which makes the 
demand for the purpose of acquiring that territory is a right 
of sovereignty which may not be questioned. Such is the con- 
clusion of the whole matter, sovereignty is supreme, and any 
war is part thereof: “The law of nations allows any sovereign 
government to make war upon another sovereign State,” says 
F. Lieber. 

And so there came to be a new system which was at the 
same time not a new system; it was the old system on a different 
basis; the national conclusions remained the same, but the 
premises were different. In its final decision, its war decision, 
the State was always right, not as heretofore because it was 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 191 


our” State and “God’s State; but now because it was “our” 
State and a sovereign State. 

This does not mean that any particular change came all at 
once; for it could not. Neither was any change, when it did 
come, uniform. Diversities of civilization and of government 
in different countries were too great for any such possibility. 
The old ideas of the heavenly righteousness of a State persisted 
in expression and even, as for example, among the peoples of 
Russia, in belief; but the international law doctrine of the final 
sovereignty of a State was at hand to supply any gap and remove 
any doubts. The State retained its war power unchanged, under 
the new baptism of sovereignty and on the basis of legalism, 
while the old bases of Christianity were left as a heritage of 
assertion only. 


II 


Thus two centuries after Grotius, the powers of Europe were 
still talking of themselves as entities superior to certain other 
countries because they themselves, forsooth, were “Christian 
powers”. But when Turkey was recognized as an equal in 
1856, when the red crescent was admitted to the white flag on 
an equality with the red cross, and finally when Japan became 
a great power, all such pretences, even as a form of words, 
disappeared. It may be noted that a treaty with Tripoli in 
1796 declared that “the government of the United States is not 
in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” 

Indeed to see how far the old dreams had vanished in reality, 
we need only remember that for a considerable part of the 
last century British foreign policy consistently supported the 
Mohammedan Turk as against Christian and oppressed peo- 
ples; and when in 1904 war broke out between Russia and Ja- 
pan the public sentiment of Christian nations was to a large 
extent in favor of the latter country. The certainties of Chris- 
tianity had ceased both nationally and internationally to func- 
tion as a basis of international action. 

From this discussion it might perhaps be inferred that the 


192 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


influence of Christianity upon international relations was pass- 
ing out of the picture. We had reached the point where nations 
not Christian at all were on a footing of perfect equality with 
Christian countries, a point where the “divine right of kings” 
was becoming a memory and where Christianity was no longer 
deemed the inspiration of national conduct. But the conclusion 
above suggested does not follow. “Amid the transformation 
or dissolution of intellectual dogmas the great moral principles 
of Christianity continually reappear, acquiring new power in 
the lapse of ages and influencing the type of each succeeding 
civilization.” 

We can look back now and see that the whole basis of in- 
ternational relations commenced to change in the eighteenth 
century without the fact being then observed; the doubts and 
questionings which Grotius had dimly forecast and which his 
professed followers had put aside were only sleeping. 

In the more liberal countries of the world, at least, it came 
to be clearly recognized that the conduct of a State was not 
necessarily divinely guided, but as democratic governments 
came into fashion, it was also perceived that the government, 
at any rate in affairs at home, might not only fail to be divinely 
right, but it might even be wickedly wrong. Perhaps as a 
legal maxim it might still be true that the king can do no 
wrong, but certainly a king’s government could do wrong and 
could be turned out for doing it, and in cases of urgency have 
their heads chopped off. Generally speaking, monarchs ruled 
less and less; the king’s government tended to become the gov- 
ernment, and the king tended to become merely an individual 
and not a government at all. Thus it became accepted that 
the government, any government, even our own government, 
might indeed be very foolish or very stupid or even very 
wicked. 

Naturally it was harder to recognize this where a govern- 
ment was a government by popular majority. It is so much 
easier to believe that someone else makes a mistake than to 
believe that we ourselves have made one; yet even here progress 
towards such a belief was inevitable. After all, a popular 


DE GROOT (GROTIUS) 





IL AHL AO SNINDIS 


AOIMAO NOIWOT HSLLIE AHL LV ONUVOOT 


i 
: 
. 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 193 


majority can, and sometimes does, reverse its own decisions; and 
who is wrong then? 

Logically it may not be a very long step from the belief 
that our own government is often in error at home to the 
belief that it may be sometimes wrong abroad; nevertheless 
that logical step is a very difficult one to take. The inherited 
instincts of centuries are against it; the childlike feeling of 
all humanity that things and persons near to us and familiar are 
“better” than those at a distance and unknown is one of the 
obstacles; and conventional maxims, having in part been created 
by the difficulty itself and having in part cteated it, constitute 
another. “Fifty-four forty or fight’; “Politics stops at the 


104 


water’s edge”; ‘“My country right or wrong’’—and so on, 


III 


It would seem that the moral principles of Christianity have 
had and are having their influence on international relations 
and on international law. Surely one of the essential functions 
of Christianity as a moral force is to test the provisions of man- 
made law, and lay them down beside the standard of divine 
justice, and see how far they fall short, recognizing indeed 
that perfection is not for us except as an ideal. 

With this right to war resting on a legalistic basis, came and 
still comes the challenge of Christianity, the test and compari- 
son, if we may put it so, with the words and principles of 
Christ himself. Did not God make of one blood all the nations 
of the earth? Was not Christ the Prince of Peace? Did not 
he and his Apostles after him proclaim in moving terms the 
brotherhood of manr 

Going more deeply into the moral elements of the matter, 
later Christian writers, in their inquiries into the nature of the 
State, have considered that the State, if not a Christian per- 
sonality, is at least always a moral personality. How can it 
be argued, they inquire, that the duties of a group of men are 
less than the corresponding duties of those same men as indi- 
viduals? Can we, by calling this group a State, say that it is 


194 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


not bound to do justice, not bound indeed to love its neighbor 
as itself? Admitting perhaps that the frailties of humanity 
do not permit even individuals to live according to the prin- 
ciples of the Christian religion, yet, they ask, must not at least 
the same attempt be made to live by those principles, nationally 
and internationally, as personally? 

It will be observed that the very posing of these questions 
gives a basis for thinking of the influence of Christianity upon 
international affairs vitally different from that which prevailed 
at the time when the Church was bound up with the State. No 
longer implicated in the policies of government as such, the 
religion of the community may well test government by its 
own moral and religious standards, and that is what the Chris- 
tianity of today is doing for international law. 

We need not argue that it is in these questions we have 
mentioned that we find the direct evidence of present and recent 
tendencies; rather, we may say, that they are the reflex of the 
sentiments of Christians and Christian communities, coming 
with the progress of education and the spread of knowledge to 
view the rules of the conduct of political life, national and 
international, in the light of those divine principles and guides 
which they justly regard as universal in their application. 

It is inevitable at the present time that rules for the conduct 
of government which touch human interests should be viewed 
by the community in the light of its own moral and common- 
sense standards; and the test is naturally of a much broader 
nature than one merely religious, although the more vital the 
matter, the more inevitable will be the religious measure. Those 
who believe in the teachings of Christ are naturally more con- 
cerned with a rule of conduct which touches, or which at 
least may touch, the very life of millions than with some minor 
rule of property, for example. 


IV 


We need not perhaps go farther than this, but we can cer- 
tainly go as far. Because a legalistic basis for international 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 195 


relations has come to be established (and perhaps all the more 
because its establishment was admittedly very imperfect), it 
must from time to time in its largest aspects be re-examined in 
the light of human knowledge and progress. Of course there 
have been many forces at work to this end; international law has 
not remained as to all other law a thing apart; indeed the very 
fact that it was regarded as law of one kind has brought to it 
some of the analogies and some of the developments of other 
human forces. 

And one of the most vital of these forces is Christianity. 
No longer are its institutions and machinery a part of the 
system under criticism and study, alike by the expert and by the 
multitude; but all the greater is the potency of Christianity, 
since the lessons and the ideals of Christ form, more or less 
unconsciously, no doubt, and more or less incompletely, one of 
the standards by which the decisions of millions are guided. 

The modern history of international arbitration is a most 
striking example of this general development. 

The idea of international arbitration is a very ancient one. 
Certainly it was well known to the Greeks as far back as the 
sixth century B.C. Perhaps it then involved some idea of a 
common religion. However that may be, the practice did not 
disappear. Questions in dispute between different monarchs 
were from time to time decided by the pope from very early 
centuries. Other very striking if exceptional instances may be 
found even in the Middle Ages. These latter were based largely 
on the system of individual sovereignty—two rulers seeking the 
decision of a third, their personal equal. To suppose that 
such arbitrations were then regarded as a submission of claims 
of states, in the present sense of that word, would be to ante- 
date ideals of our own times. 

But international arbitration as now applicable to sovereign 
states has come to be based on so many treaties and on such 
extent of precedent that the principle of arbitration has grown, 
within undefined limits, to be a part of customary international 
law. 

When the idea arrived that states are properly to be regarded 


196 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


as sovereign entities in their interrelations, it involved also the 
thought that all states are equals and none a judge; but the 
legalistic concept of this new State idea, with its acceptance 
of rules of law to be applied to states in their relations with each 
other, carried with it as a logical development the possibility 
that differences between states might (or perhaps even should 
come before some sort of tribunal for decision; for rules of 
law almost imply a possible tribunal as a background. 

All this may seem logical enough. But to put the logic into 
international practice (despite the ancient background of old 
ideas) presented a difficulty. This difficulty the statesmen of 
the eighteenth century met and vanquished, repeating that they 
did not know how far their conquest might lead. And as a 
very notable instance of this progress we may mention the 
treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1794. 


Vv 


Let us, independently of our knowledge of history, think of 
such an agreement for a moment and see what it means. Two 
sovereign states submit their differences or dispute to one or 
more private individuals for decision. Each sovereign State 
claims to be right; but at the same time each announces its 
willingness to have a verdict cast that it is wrong. When a 
modern sovereign State first said this, a new step in interna- 
tional relations was taken, a step impossible and illogical under 
any theory of divine right and certain to affect the war sov- 
ereignty doctrine in ways perhaps even yet unrealized. 

If a dispute between two sovereign great powers can be de- 
cided in favor of one of them, and against the other, by a 
private citizen, say of Switzerland, the doctrine of war sov- 
ereignty is in reality shaken to its foundations. Of course it 
is legally argued that this is not so, and juristically these argu- 
ments are well enough. 

The man in the street may be disposed to ask: Is there an 
unquestioned right in international law to go to war, to kill 
and slay, for a cause which international law itself, following 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 197 


another road, would say is wrong? And he wonders why inter- 
national law may not, as law, decide all such international 
matters; and if he bases his inquiry on Christian ideals his 
scrutiny will become even more searching. 

Many such instinctive reactions of common thought are to 
be found in present-day discussions of international affairs. One 
of the most significant of these, perhaps, is the religious move- 
ment in favor of the outlawry of war generally and of a world 
court of international justice specifically. The usual great dif- 
ferences of view as to details doubtless exist, but they are not 
here material. The striking fact is that these international 
questions are being discussed and debated by some millions of 
citizens of many states, with this agreement, namely, that the 
principles of Jesus are to be the basis of their solution. 

As to the future, we may expect that international civiliza- 
tion will make progress in the direction of a reign of world law 
and away from the use of force; but perhaps the only certainty 
about it is that any progress, any change, will be very slow. 
There are two enemies of progress and both equally mistaken: 
those who think that an ideal can be realized overnight, and 
those who think that an ideal cannot be realized at all. 

Nothing perhaps is more mysterious than the inner workings 
of those hidden forces which from time to time focus in what 
we call public opinion. It is a trite observation, that these be- 
liefs are constantly finding fuller expression in direct political 
action of all kinds; it would be truer, perhaps, to think of this 
change as we see it as merely a visible and more speedy mani- 
festation of what has always been the final arbiter, even under 
the most complete despotism. 

Certainly in our time Christianity is one of the most deep- 
seated of these forces. ‘The Church may no longer give orders to 
governments; still less may it now act as government itself. 
But in the souls of men the teachings of the religion of Christ 
are effectively helping to bring on, although perhaps by almost 
imperceptible degrees, a common belief and a common action 
toward divine justice as the fundamental basis of all human law, 
including that which we call international. 










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BOOK IV 


Pie RACES 


While the nation ts the largest organized community, the race 
1s one of the largest unorganized communities and 1s generally 
possessed of a high self-consciousness. Racial and national lines 
rarely coincide, on the contrary they usually cut across each 
other in conflicting and confusing ways. This is particularly the 
case when two or more races are brought into that close contact 
which is the result of colonial rule or from the entry by im- 
migration of groups of one race into the territory of another. 






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CHAPTER XVII 
THE RACE PROBLEM 


“Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, bar~ 
barian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all and in all’ So, even 
though Christianity naturally cannot undertake to dictate detailed answers to 
biological or purely economic questions, Christianity as Christianity can know 
nothing of race supremacy or race exclusiveness. Our failures, past and present, 
to live up to this ideal are notorious. How can we do better in the future? 

HE roots of the race problem run down into the soil of 

human history; they go back to the physical heritage 

of man as a created being; they penetrate into the psy- 
chology at once of instinct and of will; they are irrigated by 
the flow of the world-wide streams of economic interchange 
and are nourished by the powerful forces of industrial expan- 
sion. One of the most baffling tangles in the planet-wide 
problem of education, the race problem confronts those who 
share the Christian belief in the Fatherhood of God and in the 
Kingdom of God with a titanic challenge. 

The race problem is fundamental; and it is fundamental 
simultaneously in the fields of ethnology, sociology, biology, 
psychology, economics, ethics, and religion. Geographically 
world-wide in its range, it affects the future of the life of men 
of every continent. 

It is a problem of swiftly-growing human populations on a 
planet with a land surface of fixed dimensions. It is a problem 
of the clash of differing standards and codes of morals and 
of manners, of cleanliness, and of cost of living,—indeed of dif- 
fering conceptions of civilization itself,—in a world where 
modern transport is throwing men of all races into each other’s 
immediate presence. It is a problem of conflicting claims— 


claims to rights in territory and to the use of native language; 
201 


202 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


on the one hand, claims to political authority and to self- 
determination on the other. It is a problem in the inherent 
educable capacity of some races. It brings into view inquiry as 
to the practicability of equality and justice in a complex world. 
Most of all for the Christian individual and the Christian 
society of the Church, it presents the question: Which is to 
triumph, the ineradicable actual physical facts of biological 
difference, or the spiritual fact of the unity of man as created 
in God’s image? On the issue of that conflict the future of 
the human race depends. 

What is the actual relationship existing between the white 
race and the indigenous populations of the countries into which 
the white race has expanded, either by its commercial activities 
or its governmental control or both; and what is the relation of 
Christ’s programme to that situation? 

The expansion of the white race has thrown them into a 
controlling relationship with the peoples of practically all 
Africa, including those to the north as well as to the south of 
the Sahara; with the Semitic peoples of nearer Asia in Pal- 
estine, Syria, and Mesopotamia; with the more than three hun- 
dred millions of people in India and Ceylon; with the still 
uncounted millions of Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies; and 
with the greater part of the primitive island peoples of the 
world. The same expansion has thrown the white race also 
into an increasingly intimate and continuous political relation- 
ship with the nearly four hundred millions of people in China. 

This relationship of the white and other races has since the 
beginning of our century transformed the face of the world. 
In a single generation mankind has experienced ideas as revo- 
lutionary as those which occupied over three centuries of 
Europe’s life in the periods of the Renascence, the Reforma- 
tion, and the French Revolution. By far swifter processes and 
on a planetary scale, violent movements of life have impelled 
every considerable section of the human race into vehement 
racial self-consciousness. Among these revolutionizing move- 
ments are the leaven of the Western spirit of nationality through- 
out the whole world; the shattering of ancient traditional habits 


~~ 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 203 


of thought and life by modern invention and especially by the 
world transport of goods, people, and ideas by ocean liner, rail- 
way, motor, aeroplane, cable, or wireless; the impact of the 
World War; the sudden emergence and spread of bolshevism 
as a missionary force of the first magnitude. 

Let us look first of all swiftly across the geographical range 
of the scene. Beginning in Africa, we find great popula- 
tions north of the Sahara under the rule of the Latin peoples— 
the Spanish, the French, and the Italians. In Morocco the 
fierce fighting tribes have given staggering blows to the 
prestige of the white man. Next door, in Algeria, France 
exercises the most efficient of the controls possessed by the white 
men in that area. 

Shiploads of young men from Algeria—men whose fathers’ 
horizon was bounded by the mosque, the camel track, and the 
bazaar—are carried each year by the motor, the railway, and 
the liner into France. Attracted thither by higher wages, for 
them the music-hall replaces the mosque, the boulevard ousts 
the bazaar, and the four walls of the camel-khan give place to 
the world-wide scene of the cinema. They labor in the engine- 
shops and factories of France, while the young manhood which 
remains in Algeria is drilled as an integral part of the French, 
fighting forces. Meanwhile, in their own country of Algeria, 
motor routes and railways carry Western ideas to the remoter 
villages; and the “caterpillar” car outspeeds the camel as it 
rolls across the Sahara. 

Moving eastward across the Italian colonies of Tripolitania 
and Cyrenaica, we discover for the first time in Egypt an 
Egyptian prime minister elected by the popular vote of the 
Egyptians, with his cabinet controlling that country. The won- 
der of this deepens when we recall that since the Persians swept 
the land twenty-five centuries ago, no Egyptian ruler of any 
kind has held supreme control. Even Cleopatra was a vassal 
of Rome. 

Britain in Egypt has, by some of the most remarkable efforts 
in service of a subject people that history can show, established 
justice and economic prosperity out of ruinous foundations in 


204 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


previous bankruptcy and misrule. In a word, Britain created 
an Egyptian life strong enough to be discontented, so that when 
the ferment of self-determination ran through the world from 
Dublin to Delhi, Egypt claimed and secured self-rule. 

Looking northward we see how—after their shattering de- 
feat in the World War—the Turks, following the shining 
scimitar of Mustapha Kemal, not only completely routed the 
forces of Greece, but imposed the Turkish will on the whole 
of Europe in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and simultaneously 
overthrew the control of the Caliphate. This is one of the most 
vivid and violent demonstrations ever made of the immense 
dynamic force of a secular nationalism passionately set on 
self-determination. 

Swinging south-east to Palestine and Syria, and then up to 
Iraq, we discover a form of government new in history. Here 
white rule is exercised through mandates, conferred by a 
League of Nations representing over fifty peoples, and strictly 
reviewed every year by a permanent commission of these na- 
tions on the basis of a closely scrutinized report. The manda- 
tory rule in these areas is exercised by two white races over a 
Semitic population predominantly Arab. 

We now move across Persia—where the widespread ferment 
of nationalism is not yet sufficiently cohesive for action—to the 
greatest, the subtlest, the most complex of all the situations 
created by the world expansion of the white race—namely, the 
government, direct and indirect, by Britain of more than three 
hundred million people in India. 

The race ferment that has thrown up in Morocco an Abd-el- 
Karim (a fighting leader), in Egypt a Zaghloul Pasha (a 
political agitating revolutionary), and in Turkey a Musta- 
pha Kemal (a genius at once in politics and war) has created in 
India a Mahatma Gandhi (a spiritual ascetic flame). This 
difference in leadership is, in itself, a revelation of the strikingly 
different material upon which the race consciousness is working 
in India. 

Not only the personality of Gandhi himself, but the char- 
acteristic features of his programme and of what has followed 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 205 


from it, suggest that the conflict here is not fundamentally 
political, or racial, or economic, but in essence cultural, if not 
actually spiritual. Gandhi’s appeals for the saucer lamp against 
the paraffin lamp; the ox cart against the motor car; the 
spinning-wheel and the hand-woven cloth against the imported 
fabric—these are pathetically, hopelessly outdated. But they 
are symbols of a profound spiritual warfare that commands 
sympathy. They are expressions of a passionate desire to pre- 
serve the ancient spiritual and intellectual heritage of India 
from the tidal wave of modern Western commercialism, from 
standards that measure progress by external material opulence 
and productive mechanism rather than by spiritual reality and 
personal poise. 

The political battle that rages incessantly in India (though 
with occasional lulls in its fury) is essentially its battle for a 
new status and relationship, consistent with the immortal spir- 
itual elements in India’s religious heritage. 

While, however, it is a spiritual struggle, it is being fought 
out in the realm of politics within the British Commonwealth 
of nations. This creates a terrible conflict of loyalties in the 
lives of millions—Indians and English—who believe with equal 
intensity, on the one hand, in the vital necessity that India 
should (for the word’s sake as well as its own) preserve and 
spread its priceless spiritual and intellectual heritage, and, 
on the other hand, that this can only be done, at this stage, 
in a free fellowship within the ordered life of the British 
Commonwealth. 

If a solution of the race problem can be found in the Indian 
situation the forces of that solution may well lead on to a 
world-wide solution of the problem. On the other hand, failure 
in India will broadcast a fever of exasperation eastward over 
all Asia and across the Pacific, and westward through all Africa 
into America. 

No short summary of the tangled web of the race problem 
in India could possibly represent its momentous issues with 
fairness and clarity. The interweaving of the world’s race prov- 
lems, however, is revealed strikingly in the fact that the analysis 


206 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


of the Indian problem would carry us at once across the In- 
dian Ocean to Kenya Colony in East Africa, and the one hun- 
dred and sixty thousand Indians in South Africa. So advanced 
a thinker as General Smuts sets up a flat refusal to assent to an 
Indian franchise in South Africa (on the ground, for instance, 
that in Natal it would give an Indian majority). He argues 
that what is at stake in the whole of that subcontinent of South 
Africa is whether the type of civilization to prevail there shall 
be the type imported from the white Western world, or that 
from Asia, or—as a third alternative—that of the enormously 
more numerous Negro population. The question he does not 
raise is this fascinating, baffling, yet ultimately inescapable one: 
can we not develop a civilization that will ultimately integrate 
the best elements in each rather than arrogate to one civilization 
a monopoly of good? 

We cross by a natural bridge to the Negro question in Africa 
and in America. The first outstanding fact in the Negro situa- 
tion, as it has now developed, is that the Negroes can never 
possibly be separated in their lives from interrelationship 
and continuous contact with the white race. Negro Africa, from 
the Sahara to Cape Town, and from the Atlantic to the Indian 
Ocean, is not simply a_ political dependency of European 
peoples; its rubber and cotton, cocoa and ivory, timber and 
tobacco, gold and diamonds are a part of the life-blood of white 
civilization. The demands for labor on plantations and in 
mines are drawing the young men by the million from the 
old tribal environment into modern city conditions. This process 
in Africa is swiftly shattering at once the spiritual authority 
of Animism over the Bantu peoples, the political structure of 
African tribalism, and the economic agricultural simplicity that 
has prevailed through the centuries. 

The two forces in Africa which create among the indige- 
nous peoples the most vigorous reactions of unrest are: the 
exclusion of the Negro from the possession of his ancestral 
land, and the will of white labor to create and maintain a 
monopoly of the skilled and highly-paid occupations, leaving 
the Negro and the half-caste to the unskilled work. ‘These 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 207 


statements are susceptible to qualification in a number of areas; 
but, surveying the field generally, they hold. In the more 
advanced parts of South Africa a third force—the refusal of a 
share in government—has its definite bearing upon racial 
friction. 

We discover a radically different background when we follow 
the Negro across the Atlantic into the complex issues of the 
American race problem. The historic background is, of course, 
entirely different. In Africa the white peoples have thrust 
themselves into the Negro’s continent; in America the white 
man has dragged the Negro into his continent. The necessity 
of importing large masses of cheap slave labor into the Southern 
States and the subsequent liberation have created a situation in 
which the Negro is on the whole in a position of social sepa- 
ratism, political disability, and educational disadvantage; he is 
subject to some measure of economic exclusion from skilled 
labor and trades, and of different standards of treatment for the 
Negro and the white man in the whole body of custom and the 
administration of law. 

The general body of Negro opinion shows a desire, above all, 
for education; a demand for “equal opportunity to work for 
just wages and under fair conditions”; a share in government; 
security from race prejudice in legal decisions and from mob 
violence; and release from unfair discrimination. 

The mind may well find itself baffled by the confusion, and 
thrown into despair by the magnitude, of the issues presented by 
the race problems, their immensity, complexity, and widely 
differing characteristics as between the Far East, the Middle 
East, and the Near East; the Mediterranean world of Islam, 
Tropical and South Africa, and America. 

When, however, we look steadily at the matter, certain com- 
mon characteristics emerge. These simultaneously simplify the 
outlines and give us greater hope of solution. An analysis of 
the race problem in all these areas shows that a social and 
economic and political condition, or fear, or need, is in each 
case at the root of the difficulty. Even where the feeling of race 
hostility is due to states of mind, it is a matter not of truly 


208 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


fundamental instinct, but of acquired ideas. In a word, race 
conflict is not rooted in the very make-up of man in himself, but 
is imposed upon him by an astonishing variety of powerful 
forces that have rapidly concentrated within recent years in 
creating these disturbing economic, social, and political condi- 
tions and reactions against them. 

The principal remedy is education. By education is meant 
religsous education (which is not education about religion, but 
education with a religious aim; or, in other words, education 
that interprets the world as a creation of spirit), an education 
of the youth of all peoples as well as the adult, which will give 
through history, geography, and other sources a just interpreta- 
tion of the life of the other peoples of the world. This will 
include not only the shaping of school education with its text- 
books and the spirit of its teaching staffs, but a vigorous attempt 
to strengthen all the elements in the press and in literature that 
make for mutual understanding. As a part of the educational 
process, inter-racial conference would be involved, both of 
leaders and of the rank and file. Such education would aim, for 
instance, in the case of the African peoples, at strengthening 
their character and capacity in those directions where their 
native gifts and their environment show they can make their best 
contribution to the world. 

It should be an education, too, that would not attempt to 
assimilate all peoples to a common cultural standard, but would 
develop in them those elements which constitute their gift to 
the world, while aiming centrally at building character of such 
a type that mutual respect, confidence, and happy natural social 
relationship could be built upon it. 

Those who have met in continuous intercourse and conference 
men and women of other races in whom these qualities have 
been created by education know that there is a real basis for 
racial interrelationship, and that the Christian Gospel has in- 
herent in it the full message on this issue. 

The fact that the nations which have called themselves Chris- 
tian have themselves gone far to create the problem and to 
exacerbate the whole situation is due not to the Christianity they 











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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 209 


profess, but to their manifest failure to apply their Christianity, 
or even to begin to understand its bearing on the problem. 
Christendom has no single mind upon the race problem and, 
as a world force, has developed no common policy. Yet there 
lies within the teaching of the New Testament the truth that can 
make the world free from the race peril. 

In every race men and women in increasing numbers are feel- 
ing their way toward a real understanding of that truth. They 
are doing so not in an abstract way, nor in general terms, but 
in practical grappling with the race problem as it presents itself 
locally. They are doing so, not in isolation, but in groups. The 
successful local explorations and experiments of those groups 
are becoming the basis of more general efforts toward a solu- 
tion; while a success achieved or an educational experiment de- 
veloped in one area leads to new advances in others. Such a 
world-wide radiation of influences as those of the Commission 
on Inter-racial Co-operation in the United States, which begin- 
ning in Atlanta in 1919 has spread through the entire South, is 
one example out of a multitude illustrating this most promising 
development. They lead us on to the conviction that, stupendous 
as the race problem is in its range and menace, it is still 
possible for man to compass its solution through the release 
of the organized forces of good will, guided and energized by 
the supernatural purpose and power of God. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


COLONIAL RULE 


Through colonial government, the nations of the Christian West have in the 

last hundred years controlled the fortunes of a great part of the rest of man- 

kind. The Christian spirit, in turn, retains some measure of control over the 

conscience of the ruling nations. How can the effective influence of this 
Christian spirit be increased? 


HE modern world may be said to have begun in the 

fifteenth century, when the narrow limits of the old 

world were broken through and the European races 
passed out to mingle in ever increasing intimacy of relations 
with the other races of the world. Spain and Portugal were the 
leaders, and their colonies soon covered the Americas and 
southern Asia from Goa to the Philippines. Some of these the 
British wrested away while they set up a far wider range of 
their own, beginning in America, spreading over Africa, west- 
ern, southern, and eastern Asia, and islands in all the seas. 
Holland shared in the spoliation of the Spanish and Portuguese, 
and established rule over many times more millions abroad than 
lived within the dykes at home; today in Java alone it governs 
a population five times the population of Holland itself. The 
French colonies broke before the British in North America and 
India, but in later years new colonies were developed in south- 
eastern Asia and in Africa. Of recent origin were the German 
colonies and the extension of Japanese rule over Korea and the 
government of the United States over the Philippines and Porto 
Rico and Hawaii. Belgian control of the Congo came a little 
earlier. Russian colonization in the adjacent territories of 
northern Asia was spread over a good part of the nineteenth 
century. Colonial administration by the white races came to 


extend in one or another of its forms over all of North and South 
210 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 211 


America and extends today over all of Africa except Liberia 
and Abyssinia, over almost all the islands of the oceans, and 
over large areas of southern and central Asia. The peoples of 
other races living under the administration of the white race, 
either in colonial territory or in its equivalent, cannot be less 
than six hundred million. The problem of relations to these 
races is one of the major problems in human history. 

Have these relations been controlled in the main by humane 
principles and the Christian spirit? Were they begun in this 
way? A-religious purpose was avowed in some of the early 
Spanish colonizations and undoubtedly characterized the mis- 
sionaries who accompanied or followed the conquerors and the 
colonists. Lord Sidney Olivier states the view plainly that the 
real motive in initiating colonial expansion has not been philan- 
thropic or altruistic: 

“Every nation having colonies or external dependencies ac- 
quires and holds them for the sake of benefits to its own citizens, 
whether as settlers, traders, or investors of capital in those ter- 
ritories, and in so far as the sovereign nation orders the govern- 
ment of its colonies and dependencies, the dominant guiding 
factor in its policy will be the promotion of those ends. The 
policy of the government in regard to native races is secondary 
and subsidiary. The exceptions to this rule are extremely few 
and such as must be considered to have been in the nature of 
accidents in the history of colonization. . . . In relation to 
such uncivilized colonies and dependencies, and in relation also 
to those civilized and self-governing colonies and dependencies 
in which there survives an uncivilized population of alien race, 
the methods of government are directed and influenced not 
merely by considerations of the commercial benefit of the col- 
onists or citizens of the sovereign nation, but also by considera- 
tions of philanthropy and humanity, and to a certain extent by 
the influence of a missionary purpose aiming at imposing upon 
the uncivilized and alien native what is reputed within the sov- 
ereign nation to be a morality, a religion, and a social order 
superior to those which he has himself evolved.” 

It was not to be expected that relations beginning in a purely 


az AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY ; 


selfish and commercial interest and maintained by men,—often 
unchastened and unsustained by the influence of women of their 
own race,—as a rule unrepresentative of the Christian spirit and 
ideal, and too often bent on the speedy acquisition of wealth, 
should have been Christian relations. As a matter of fact 
they have been full of elements of evil and luxuriant in 
evil result, utterly repugnant to Christian morality. T. C. 
Dawson calls the colonial period in South America “the Devil’s 
dance of Spanish carnage”. And the Spanish missionary Bar- 
tholomew de las Casas, the defender of the contemporary In- 
dians, declared: ‘The Devil could not have done more 
mischief than the Spaniards have done in distributing and de- 
spoiling the countries, in their rapacity and tyranny; subjecting 
the natives to cruel tasks, treating them like beasts, and persecut- 
ing those especially who apply to the monks for instruction.” 
The races of the South Seas and of Africa have been among 
the chief sufferers. Honolulu was a brothel for visiting ships 
until, under missionary influence, the Hawaiians sought to 
abolish licentiousness and intemperance. It is not too much to 
say that the early contacts of the white race with the other 
races were generally pitched on a selfish and immoral level. 

Even when the commercial relations with primitive peoples 
were free from unworthy elements they were often essentially 
and inevitably destructive in their influence. Contact with 
Western civilization introduced fundamental changes in social 
and economic life. The white race introduced good govern- 
ment and often pledged itself to safeguard aboriginal rights, 
but it monopolized trade, and in spite of all the good which it 
has done its influence has often resulted in a decrease of the 
population and a substitution of new moral evils for old. 
Among sundry specific evils chargeable to the non-Christian 
aspects of colonial race contacts are the liquor traffic; exploita- 
tion of the people and resources; and expropriation of their 
lands; slavery, or forced labor which is sometimes equivalent to 
slavery, or the coolie traffic, which is another equivalent and 
which was for years the curse of the South Sea Islands. 

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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 213 


every “superior” race which deals unjustly and oppressively 
with other races. Too often the weaker race has been ruined. 
But the destruction is not all on one side. “There is a tendency,” 
said Baron d’Estournelles de Constant at the Universal Races 
Congress in London in 1911, “however much our better rep- 
resentatives may resist it and protest against it—a regrettable 
and retrograde tendency, among white men once left to their 
own devices, to cultivate and foster deliberately a brutality 
whose evil traditions they then bring back with them to their 
mother State; so that the harm we thought we could inflict with 
impunity upon others returns on our own heads. He whose aim 
it was to rule has become a slave. The poison he meant to 
spread about him has entered his own veins.” 

It cannot be denied that this side of the account of our re- 
lations with other races is very black. Sir John Kirk went so 
far as to declare of Africa: ‘The last four centuries of contact 
with Europeans and European trade have degraded rather than 
elevated or improved the people.”’ At one period of our Amer- 
ican history students of our relations with the Indians could see 
little but dishonor and wrong. But dark as the evil has been, 
it is not the whole story. In South America the colonial control 
brought many unquestionable benefits, among which Dawson 
enumerates the civilized system of jurisprudence, the letters, 
and the religion which have made the peoples of the continent 
members of the great western European family, the introduction 
of new and valuable animals, grains and fruits. ‘Horses, asses, 
cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, pigeons, wheat, barley, oats, 
rice, olives, grapes, oranges, sugar cane, apples, peaches and 
related fruits, and even the banana and the cocoa palm were 
introduced by the Spaniards.” And as to Africa Dr. Thomas 
Jesse Jones weighs the evidence on both sides and sums up the 
judgment: ‘The record of government service in Africa is a 
mingling of the good and the bad, the effective and the in- 
effective, the wise and the unwise. Despite the failures and 
injustices of the governments in handling the natives, the ad- 
vantages to native life provided by the colonial governments 
have on the whole overshadowed the disadvantages.” 


214 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


There are those who deny that the influence of Christianity 
has had any appreciable influence on colonial relations, or who 
assert even that its influence has been hurtful when it has been 
exerted in what the churches have believed to be its purest 
form, namely, in the foreign missionary enterprise. “I should 
like nothing better,” wrote Alexander Agassiz, from the Ellice 
Islands, “than to enter intoacrusade . . . and show up the 
mission fraud.” Sometimes this unfavorable judgment of mis- 
sionary influence appears to be due to the idea that the mission- 
aries break down the supremacy or authority of colonial officials 
or other white people by too great a concession to the idea of 
human equality, or by sheltering or supporting native races. 
Some writers like Lothrop Stoddard approve the Chris- 
tianization of the Africans on the ground that it will make them 
submissive and content with a status of inferiority. Others like 
Professor C. C. Josey deprecate the result of releasing Christian 
ideas and forces among the subject races. ‘The promulgation 
of Christian ideals in the Orient can but have a tendency to 
stir discontent and arouse opposition to the dominant group. 
The ethics of Christianity make this inevitable. When these 
ethical conceptions are given a divine support their power to 
stir up friction and a determined assertion of what one feels 
to be his rights becomes all the greater.” Professor Josey is 
opposed to the Christian ideal of universal brotherhood or 
human unity. He believes that the right relations between the 
white races and all other races are possible only by the frank 
exclusion of Christian influence from these relations. 

Let us seek to analyze briefly the influence of Christianity 
on the relations of colonizing nations to other races. 

Christianity does not teach an unreal equalitarianism. It 
recognizes differences between man and man and explicitly 
teaches diversity of function and gift. But it does teach a true 
equality whose recognition would make impossible the injus- 
tices which have marked the relations of colonial groups to the 
native races. 

In no way has the real effect of Christianity upon the race 
relationships which we are considering been more evident than 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 215 


in the personal character and influence of individual Christian 
men placed in the position of colonial administrators. On the 
one hand, Christianity has in some cases been disabled and 
its influence excluded from racial relationships by the non- 
Christian character and attitude of colonial authorities. But 
on the other hand, the whole tone and level of race relations 
have been lifted by men like the Lawrences and their associates 
in the Punjab school of statesmen in India and by a long line 
of like-minded successors, down to Sir Andrew Fraser and men 
like him in our own time. The Indian mutiny was put down 
by Indian troops whom Lawrence trusted and who trusted him. 
The gains which humanity has gathered from the influence of 
true Christian men in colonial life help to reveal the shame and 
loss which have come because so many representatives of the 
ruling races have been misrepresentative of the Christian char- 
acter and spirit. 

Christianity embodies the conviction that no race is doomed 
to a servile and menial career, but that all these subject races 
are capable of education and development and of essential par- 
ticipation in the common life of mankind. The non-Christian 
conscience of the past has disbelieved this and has acted on its 
disbelief. Christianity not only denies the doctrine of the or- 
ganic disqualification of any race under colonial rule, but it 
believes in opening wide the door of opportunity in faith that 
the other race will enter in. Christianity, moreover, believes 
that it can qualify the backward races for full human service 
and that its influence is adequate to transform racial as well as 
individual character. 

The influence of Christianity has affected colonial relations 
by opposing the false theories which have been advanced with 
regard to the relation of the so-called stronger and weaker races, 
such as: the right of the stronger to subjugate and exploit the 
weaker; the theory of segregation which holds that the white 
race may go where it pleases and do what it will, but that the 
other races must keep within the bounds set for them by the 
white race, and be content to take the place within these bounds 
allotted them by the white race; the amalgamation of races 


216 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


which imperils race personality and integrity and which, as a 
matter of fact, in its modern forms has been the result for the 
most part of the lax morals of the so-called superior races and 
of their contempt for wholesome racial differentiation, espe- 
cially in the matter of sex morality. The Christian conscience 
has denounced the moral abuses of colonial rule. They have 
' been Christian representatives who have borne a good part of the 
opprobrium for the war against the traffic in coolies and fire- 
arms in the South Seas, against the liquor traffic in Africa, and 
against opium in India and China. 

The opening of educational opportunities and the establish- 
ment of educational ideas for races under colonial rule have 
been in large part the work of Christian missionaries. ‘The 
whole educational movement in India rests historically on the 
work of the British missionaries William Carey and Alexander 
Duff. In South Africa, China, Japan, Korea, Persia, and many 
other lands also, it was Christian influence which founded 
modern education. 

The Christian spirit has steadily increased its hold upon the 
conscience of the Western nations in the matter of their colonial 
relations to other races, and has brought that conscience ever 
nearer to the acceptance of the principle of trusteeship in these 
relations. At the beginning of the modern colonial develop- 
ment and for centuries afterwards the conquering and coloniz- 
ing nations did not appear to feel the need of any justification 
whatever for their invasion and appropriation of the territories 
belonging to other races. Whenever any group, like the colony 
of William Penn, proceeded upon other principles, it was 
regarded as quite exceptional, if not visionary, and it must be 
regretfully acknowledged that such high principles usually 
yielded to the pressure of selfishness and injustice. 

The conception of the rights of the weaker races is still 
very inadequately established. In 1899 Professor A. V. Dicey 
justified any annexation or war that might be necessary not for 
the good of the races annexed or conquered, but for the annex- 
ing and conquering nation. And some years later another writer 
was arguing for world empire as “the only logical and rational 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 217 


aim for a nation”, and declared that, “it is the absolute right 
of a nation to live to its fullest intensity, to expand, to found 
colonies, to’ get richer and richer by any proper means, such 
as armed conquest, commerce, and diplomacy.” But slow and 
imperfect as the advance has been, nevertheless the conscience 
of colonizing nations toward other races has been progressively 
Christianized. The Berlin Conference of 1885 deliberately 
avowed the philanthropic motive and obligation in colonial 
relationships in Africa. “All the powers exercising sovereign 
rights or influence in the African territories bind themselves to 
-watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care 
for the improvement of the conditions of their moral well-being, 
and to help in suppressing slavery and especially the slave- 
trade.” Bismarck praised this “careful solicitude for the moral 
and physical welfare of the native races”. ‘The Covenant of 
the League of Nations, specifying the terms on which the 
former colonies of Germany are to be administered under the 
mandates of the League declares that they must be governed 
under “the principle that the well-being and development of 
such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization”. The League 
Covenant goes still further. It specifies in Article XXIII that 
the members of the League, not only in mandated colonies 
but everywhere, will “undertake to secure just treatment of the 
native inhabitants of territories under their control”. It is rec- 
ognized, of course, that this means honest work and a fair share 
of meeting the cost on the part of the native races. 

A primary Christian element in this doctrine of trusteeship 
is the preparation of the subject races for self-government. “TI 
hold strongly,” writes C. L. Temple, Lieutenant-Governor of 
the Northern Provinces of Nigeria, “that fusion, extermination 
of the reclamation of liberty of action must sooner or later be 
the destiny of the subject race.” Ruling races have been slow 
to recognize this. The East India Company had no such no- 
tion. In 1813 a resolution that the first duty of Parliament in 
legislating for India was to promote its interests was lost, but 
men like the Lawrences and Sir Herbert Edwardes saw the 
true principle clearly, and it was embodied in the declarations 


218 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


of transfer of India from the company to the crown. The Chris- 
tian spirit requires that all just government shall seek to pro- 
mote true self-government. 

If Christian influence may be so beneficial in colonial race 
relationships, what is the duty of governments with regard 
to it? Christianity does not ask to be supported by government 
or identified with civilization. It has suffered greatly from 
such confusions and from the hindrances of government and 
trade. Nevertheless it is the duty of government and com- 
merce, or of the men who conduct them, to be and to act as 
Christian men. Edwardes drew this lesson from the Indian 
mutiny: “It is not the language of fanaticism which says: 
‘Christianize your policy.’ It is the language of sound wisdom; 
it is the language of experience. I say that the Christian policy 
is the only policy of hope.” The history of colonial race re- 
lations would seem to support Edwardes’s views. None but 
the Christian solution of the problem holds out any hope of 
peace and progress. 


CHAPTER XIX 
IMMIGRATION 


A nation’s refusal to permit the immigration of certain races is almost invariably 

due to economic tension of some sort. But the Christian ideal of human 

brotherhood must insist that every justice be done to the needs and dignity of 

the excluded peoples and that every energy be bent towards removing the 
causes of conflict. 


INCE before the dawn of history great invasions and 
migrations of one race into the territory of another have 
been common. Wave after wave of Caucasians has swept 

into Europe, into north Africa, into India, into the Americas, 
and even into the Far East. Asiatic culture and races have 
repeatedly invaded Europe and well-nigh overwhelmed it— 
Persians, Huns, Saracens, Moors, Turks. 

But during the past four hundred years the white peoples 
of Europe have acquired an extraordinary ascendancy. ‘They 
now control nine-tenths of the habitable area of the globe. In 
this process of expansion they little thought of the harm they 
brought and the wrongs they did to the people whose lands 
they invaded. They little realized the depth of indignation 
and the strength of wrathful resentment they were laying up 
for themselves. 

Beginning with the twentieth century the problem of the 
white and yellow races entered a new phase. Japan’s challenge 
to Russia and its amazing victories on land and sea were 
momentous in many ways. Japan proved the capacity of an 
Asiatic people to acquire the white man’s knowledge and 
mastery of nature’s titanic powers. It suddenly loomed before 
the peoples of Europe as a first-class power, a new factor in 
world affairs, not to be despised or ignored. A new spirit, 

219 


220 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


moreover, at once fired the peoples of Asia—a spirit of self- 
assertion, of ambition, and of hope. 

Asia then began with feverish zeal to acquire that Occi- 
dental knowledge by which Japan had placed itself in the 
forefront of the non-white races and had proved its ability to 
stand face to face with the white peoples of Europe. The 
Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) shattered the belief in any 
intrinsic mental superiority and military invincibility of the 
white races. The World War carried that view still further. 
The white man’s civilization appeared to the astonished gaze 
of the entire world as weakened by inherent defects. Its gross 
materialism, brutal capitalism, aggressive imperialism, disre- 
gard for truth and justice, and lack of honor were suddenly 
revealed as in a moment by the lightning flashes of a storm. 

Not only has a great hope dawned on Asia, but deep mis- 
givings have developed in Europe and America. The white 
nations are not so confident as formerly of themselves, of their 
intrinsic superiority or of their “manifest destiny” to own and 
rule the world. 

Although white peoples had little considered the problems 
they had created for other races and cultures by their master- 
ful aggressions, when immigrants from Asia began in con- 
siderable numbers to enter the white man’s lands—the United 
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa— 
the race problem assumed for the white man compelling in- 
terest and significance. The first phase of the problem was 
everywhere economic. Although employers of Asiatic labor- 
ers found them cheap, docile, efficient, reliable, and altogether 
satisfactory as laborers, the competing white laborers found 
themselves confronted by intolerable economic conditions. In 
the silent battle of life they saw themselves doomed to defeat 
and destruction. The inexhaustible supplies of Asiatic labor 
became a source of positive terror. The economic struggle was 
soon transformed into one of race, and such slogans as the “white 
man’s land” and “white Australia” found ready and wide ac- 
ceptance. The alleged secret vices, immoralities, unscrupu- 
lousness, inscrutability, clannishness, unassimilability, and the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 221 


unmarriageability of Asiatics were successfully brought forward 
as psychological weapons with which to fight the economic 
conflict. From every white man’s land subject to immigration 
the complete exclusion of Asiatic labor was more or less rapidly 
achieved, not only as a fact but as a definite national policy. 
The discovery of gold in California (1849) brought the first 
Chinese immigrants to the United States. The tide soon be- 
came so great and the opposition so strong that by treaty ar- 
rangements made with China, Chinese labor immigration was at 
first suspended (1882), and later (1904) permanently stopped. 
Since 1882 Chinese in the United States have steadily dimin- 
ished in number with each census period. Agricultural oppor- 
tunities revealed in the ‘nineties lured Japanese laborers to 
California, first in small numbers and after 1900 in increasing 
numbers. In 1907 some thirty thousand came to the United 
States in a single year. This resulted in anti-Japanese agita- 
tion, which led to the “gentlemen’s agreement” (1908-1924). 
This practically stopped all new Japanese labor immigration. 
The excess departures of 21,869 of males from the United 
States during that period attest the rigid adherence to the 
agreement by the Japanese government. But the excess ar- 
rival of 41,920 females, allowed by the agreement, and the 
development of families with the birth of thousands of chil- 
dren, led to fresh anti-Japanese agitation and finally to the 
enactment by Congress (1924) of an exclusion law. It 
abruptly abrogated the agreement under conditions aggravating 
to the Japanese sense of honor and created tense strain in 
American-Japanese relations. This law excludes as immi- 
grants all “aliens ineligible for citizenship”, but permits gov- 
ernment officials, travellers, merchants, students, etc. to enter 
for temporary residence. 
- As for Canada, Chinese immigration quickly followed that 
‘nto the United States. For many years it was controlled by 
imposing a heavy head tax; but in 1923 all Chinese immigra- 
tion was forbidden save for specified classes for temporary 
residence. Japanese immigration to Canada, as to the United 
States, was unrestricted until 1907; a gentlemen’s agreement 


222 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


was then made in preference to an exclusion law. Thence- 
forward the number annually admitted was four hundred and 
fifty until 1923, when the number was reduced to one hundred 
and fifty. 

It was the discovery of gold in Australia that first induced 
Chinese immigration to that land. But the different states in 
1855 began to pass restrictive legislation. Since 1901 the “white 
Australia” policy has completely stopped all Asiatic immigra- 
tion—Indian, Malay, Japanese, Chinese. This is accomplished 
by a language test, immigrants being required to take dictation 
in any language determined by the inspector. No specified race 
or people is excluded by name. 

Immigration to New Zealand is controlled by a law which 
requires all non-British immigrants to obtain a special permit 
from the Minister of Customs, who is authorized to exercise 
his discretion. Chinese imnaigrants are required to pay a one 
hundred-pound poll tax on entering. 

Asiatic immigration into South Africa has consisted predomi- 
nantly of East Indians. As in other countries, however, this 
soon aroused in the dominant white race fear and opposition, and 
in time laws were enacted to prevent all immigration deemed 
undesirable. The law of 1913 defined prohibited immigrants 
to include “any person or class of persons deemed on economic 
grounds or on account of standards or habits of life to be 
unsuited to the requirements of the Union or any particular 
province thereof”, and “any person who is unable, by reason 
of deficient education, to read and write any European lan- 
guage to the satisfaction of the immigration officer”. 

Thus the lands—except Siberia—ruled by the white peoples 
are completely closed to immigration from China, Japan, 
India, Malaysia, and Polynesia. In reaching this situation the 
discussions which have taken place, the laws which have been 
passed, and the violences resorted to by the white race have 
caused deep resentment and wrath. 

J. H. Oldham declares that, “the problem of Oriental im- 
migration and the attitude of the United States and the British 
Dominions towards it . . . are the most active and fruitful 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 223 


cause of racial misunderstanding and antagonism in the world 
today.” America’s rebuff of Japan gave to the old problem of 
the white and yellow races a new aspect, the full consequences 
of which may not be apparent for many years. For the past 
half-century America’s treatment of and attitude towards Japan 
and China, in spite of certain evils, has had many admirable 
aspects. The political relations with these peoples of the Far 
East had been free from aggression or menace of every kind. 
Indemnities were returned to both China and Japan. Mis- 
sionary, educational, and philanthropic activities and diplomatic 
relations worked mightily to remove misunderstanding, ill 
will, prejudice, and suspicion. Occidental learning, culture, 
and religion were gaining extraordinary influence in those lands. 
It began to seem that the United States might create a new 
world attitude in the mutual relations of the white and yellow 
peoples; but the new immigration laws consolidated the race 
feeling of Asia and produced a new world situation of incalcu- 
lable possibilities. 

The long smouldering agitation for a Pan-Asian unity, to 
expel the white man from all his dominating positions in Asia, 
has started afresh. The old race issue has thus taken on a new 
aspect. The final consequences will depend, of course, on the 
next steps in this world drama. If understanding, wisdom, pa- 
tience, and determined good will prevail, and if the national 
or race pride of Japanese, Chinese, and other Asiatics be re- 
spected, the harm may not be serious. If, however, these laws 
are but the beginning of further acts of irritation and humilia- 
tion the future outlook for mankind is not bright. 

A great debate confronts the world today. 

Are some races intrinsically superior, and if so, which and 
by what criteria? Are “superior” races justified in seeking to 
dominate, exploit, and perhaps drive out, dispossess, and even 
exterminate inferior races? 

Does possession of a definite territory by a people or race 
give that people an absolute and permanently inalienable right 
to exclude individuals of every other race or people, regardless 
of all questions of population, utilization of natural resources, 


for AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


and maintenance of orderly government? Were Europeans 
within their rights in dispossessing American Indians of their 
lands? Would Japanese, Chinese, and East Indians be right 
in taking possession, had they the power to do so, of the 
United States, Canada, and Mexico, and of driving out the 
present Caucasian inhabitants? 

Has a people, merely because its numbers exceed the food 
supply of its territory or because of its military power, an in- 
herent right to migrate into less populated territory, regardless 
of the economic, social, and political disturbances it may cause 
to the population already in possession? 

This debate is vital. On its conclusions and the practices 
growing out of it depend the welfare and future of mankind. 

How does Christianity meet the problems of race contacts 
and rivalries—with their challenge to modern civilization and 
to religion? 

Two opposite schools are seeking to control thought and con- 
duct in regard to races, At one extreme is the “pagan” school, 
which is noisy and insistent but doubtless small in actual num- 
bers. It is frankly materialistic, selfish, militaristic, and im- 
perialistic. The policies of the powerful nations have 
appeared too often to be controlled by these principles and this 
spirit. This school asserts the intrinsic superiority of the white 
peoples and their consequent right to dominate and exploit 
“inferior” races, by force if necessary. It argues for the law 
of the jungle; denies the existence of moral laws in the relations 
of nations and races; appeals to science and evolution, inter- 
preted materialistically, in support of its view of nature “red 
in tooth and claw”; believes that might gives right; talks of 
the “inferior brands” and “lesser breeds” of men; justifies white 
race arrogance and pride; and urges the white race to 
drive forward in its “manifest destiny” for complete world 
domination. 

In sharp antithesis to this contention is that of many Chris- 
tian thinkers. They emphatically reject the materialistic world 
view and its pagan reliance on brute force to achieve its selfish 
ends. They assert the supremacy of spirit, of right and justice, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 225 


of truth, goodness, and love. They believe that the universe 
exists for moral and spiritual ends, and that these come to su- 
preme expression in human life, individual, social, national, and 
racial; that the human race is at bottom of “one blood”, though 
with many varieties; that the existence of races is not a mere 
chance product of evolutionary processes but is a part of the 
eternal purposes and plans of God, the wise and loving Father ; 
that the races have important contributions to make, each for 
the welfare of all; that the full potentialities of man would 
never come to light nor the full richness and wealth of human 
life be possible without the variety of families, nations, and races 
which have come into being. They believe that in the racial 
relationships moral principles have absolute and inescapable 
control, and that the wages of sin is death for nations no less 
than for individuals. 

The diversity of races, moreover, they hold, contributes to the 
discipline of life, to the moral development of mankind. The 
very problems and difficulties created by the contacts of mighty 
races and civilizations are elements in the divine plan by which 
the human race is being educated and trained in character for 
noble living. | 

The Christian view of race and race relations is rooted in 
religion, in ethics, in science, and in reproducible experience. 
This view may come to be shared by every human being who 
will personally test the Christian way of life in regard to races. 
The logic of the thorough-going ethical monotheism taught by 
the Hebrew prophets was that all men of all families, tribes, 
and nations were brothers and all included in the divine plan. 
These prophets looked forward to the time when all conflict 
would cease between the nations through their acceptance of 
a common faith in God and their practice of justice and fair 
dealings with one another. The universalism of Jesus was in 
sharp opposition to the narrow nationalism of most of the Jews 
of his time. Even his Apostles failed at first to understand it. 
But the experiences of Peter and Paul and many disciples un- 
der the guidance of the Holy Spirit led them to see that God 
is no respecter of persons—of races, as we would now say, 


226 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


and that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor 
free, and not even male or female. It was this universal outlook 
and warm brotherly fellowship which saved Christianity from 
becoming a mere Jewish sect, which successfully carried the 
new religion to every corner of the Roman Empire, and which 
has made it the great missionary religion of all time. 

It is the practice of this Christian way of life today by 
missionaries in Africa and India, in China and Japan and every 
other land, that is verifying afresh the eternal validity of the 
Christian viewpoint. The essential unity of all races, their com- 
plete mutual understanding, their mental, moral, and religious 
assimilability, and their capacity for friendship, good will, and 
co-operation—all are proved in the practical tests of actual 
experience by those who approach the problems in the spirit 
of Jesus. 

The one hope of the world for the reconciliation of the races, 
for the fundamental solution of race problems, and for the 
final abolition of war lies in the general adoption of this 
Christian viewpoint by the great nations and races in determin- 
ing their national policies and programmes. 

These convictions of Christians do not blind their eyes to 
the actual problems of race contacts, due to migration, political 
control, economic competition, and inter-racial marriage. Sane 
Christian thinkers do not advocate doctrinaire policies on these 
difficult issues. But they do advocate the scientific study and 
the practical adjustment of all these questions under the guid- 
ance of a spirit of brotherhood and good will. The difficult 
problems of Asia’s enormous populations and the Occident’s 
amazing dynamic power can only be solved for the welfare of 
all through a scientific approach prompted by the Christian 
spirit. 

White race opposition to Oriental immigration appears at 
first to be due to mere race selfishness and prejudice. More 
careful consideration shows, however, that a vital issue is 
involved. At bottom this Opposition is due to the instinct of 
self-preservation. The belief is practically universal and ap- 
parently well-grounded that the free immigration of Orientals 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION ook 


into areas occupied by white races would be fatal to their 
political, industrial, educational, and religious institutions and 
culture. In excluding Oriental mass immigration the white 
peoples are seeking to preserve themselves and their culture 
from virtual submergence and extinction. 

On the other hand, what causes bitter resentment and in- 
dignant wrath on the part of Asiatics is the humiliation of race 
discrimination with the implications of inferiority. “Not ex- 
clusion but discrimination” was the Japanese ground of con- 
demnation of America’s immigration law of 1924. From 
another quarter, too, comes expression of resentment of humil- 
iating Occidental treatment. “When :zzat [honor] is at stake 
we prefer death to anything else”, said Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru 
at an imperial conference in London. 

While self-preservation is the basic motive of the Occidental 
in barring Oriental immigration, self-respect, expectation 
of courtesy, and sense of equality underlie the Oriental claim. 
“For their national existence, their traditions, their cherished 
institutions men will fight to the end. To resist unfair discrim- 
ination, to win equal rights with other men, and to vindicate 
their honor, men are likewise prepared to die.” 

These principles are not necessarily in diametrical opposi- 
tion. They belong to different categories—they move on differ- 
ent planes. This insight is of immense importance in finding 
a solution. As soon as contending races can be led to see each 
the inviolable right which the other claims, practical steps 
toward the solution become possible. Orientals need to learn 
and acknowledge that the exclusion policies of the white races 
are based on principles of self-preservation, and hence are 
not mere expressions of arrogance and prejudice. Occidentals, 
on the other hand, need to learn and acknowledge that the great 
races of the Orient are not inferior, that the essence of their 
demand is for equality, respect, and courtesy, and that the 
question of opportunity for immigration is not the vital point 
of their insistence. 

A policy of discriminatory exclusion forcibly imposed with- 
out conference or consent by one party against the other must 


228 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


inevitably cause antagonism. And this is the more certain if 
such action is taken in contravention of already existing treaties 
and agreements. No races are more reasonable or civil than 
those of the Orient when approached with reason and civility. 
Arrangements for protection of Occidental peoples from dan- 
gerous Oriental immigration should be initiated by conference 
and carried out with Christian forbearance. 


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CHRISTENDOM AS SEEN BY OTHER FAITHS 


Members of one race too often regard the opinions of those 
who belong to another as negligible, when as a matter of fact the 
difference in points of view may bring to light facts that would 
otherwise be overlooked entirely. When difference in race 1s 
conjoined to difference in religion a special importance 1s given 
to intelligent criticism. It has seemed advisable, therefore, 
to invite three members of non-Christian civilizations to speak 
for themselves. 















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A JEWISH VIEW OF CHRISTENDOM 


That the Judaism in which Christianity originated should through so many 
centuries have learned to think of the newer religion as a hostile and persecuting 
force is one of the tragedies of history. But the worst of this antagonism is 
passing away, and it is possible to include here a personal view of Christendom 
written by a learned and revered Rabbi. 

HERE are no two religions in closer affiliation than 

Christianity and Judaism. The Synagogue stands in 

relation to the Church somewhat as a parent to a child. 
The Christian turns for the roots of his doctrine to the Hebrew 
Scriptures and especially to the Hebrew prophets. 

The closeness of the two creeds is made manifest to the Jew 
when he attends a church service. When he hears the recita- 
tion of the Ten Commandments his mind calls up a background 
of Moses and the flaming mount. When he hears the two lessons 
read, one from the Old and one from the New Testament, he 
calls to mind the two Scriptural lessons of the Synagogue from 
the Law and the Prophets from which this practice of the Chris- 
tian Church was adopted. He notes the responsive reading 
of the Psalms as part of the liturgy. In opening the Gospels 
he finds Jesus of Nazareth reciting the Jewish declaration of 
God’s unity, from Deuteronomy (named the Sh’Ma after the 
opening Hebrew word “hear’’), as the first law, and the quota- 
tion from Leviticus, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”, 
as the second. Yes, he sees his Christian neighbor observing a 
weekly day of rest, an institution that the Jew has given to 
the world. Many Hebrew terms, too, are woven into the 
church vocabulary, such as Hallelujah, Hosanna, Seraphim, 
Cherubim, Sabbath. 

231 


232 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


I may be permitted to remind those who might overlook 
it, that the first Christians were Jews. The very term Christus 
is but the Greek translation of the Hebrews’ Messiah (Me-she- 
ach, meaning anointed, applied to the installation of a king). 
This hope in the advent of a Redeemer who would fulfil the 
millennial expectation of the prophets was shared by both. 
This new Jewish sect differed from the old only in the belief 
that Jesus of Nazareth was that expected Messiah, a belief in- 
tensified by the influence of his noble personality. 

Where Jesus condemned the formalism of his day, he did 
so in the spirit of the old prophets and of that of Hillel who 
died about the time of Jesus’ birth, who taught: “What is 
hateful to thee, do not unto thy neighbor; this is the Law and 
all the rest is commentary.” 

When Christianity became the faith of the Roman world 
it assumed a very different complexion, so that the Synagogue 
no longer recognized its own monotheistic creed in the new 
doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. It differed 
further in the rejection for the most part of the Mosaic Law, 
in the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day, 
together with the new significance given to it, and in widening 
the divergence between Easter and Passover. Judaism had a 
similar experience with regard to Mohammedanism, another 
faith that it in part parented. Mohammed not only pointed to 
Abraham as the racial father of the Arabian, but accepted 
the strict monotheism of the Synagogue, and adopted the Day 
of Atonement and the Saturday Sabbath. Only later, in chagrin 
when the Jews refused to accept him as the prophet par excel- 
lence, did he deliberately change the Jewish Day of Atonement 
to the holy month of Ramadan, transfer the Sabbath from 
Saturday to Friday, and turn to Mecca instead of Jerusalem in 
worship. | 

But what contributed especially to sever relations between 
Jew and Christian was an attitude of hostility between the 
Church and the Synagogue. We meet it first in the spirit 
shown by the editors of the New Testament Gospels, the 
later strata of which show an increasing tendency to condemn 


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JEWISH CEREMONIAL 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 233 


the Jews and to emphasize their share rather than the Romans’ 
in the crucifixion of Jesus. 

This acrimony deepened into persecution as the power of the 
Roman Church grew and Western Christendom became identi- 
fied with the Holy Roman Empire. The Justinian code sys- 
tematized anti-Jewish legislation, which was amplified by dif- 
ferent European states throughout the centuries. It was hard 
for the Jew to feel anything but antagonism toward a religion 
that cast upon him so many painful indignities. It fastened 
on his garment the yellow badge of contempt in accordance 
with the edict of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. It lim- 
ited his place of residence to a ghetto, usually adjacent to a 
slum. It hemmed him in with all sorts of cruel and restrictive 
legislation. In many lands it tore Jewish children from their 
parents, to bring them up estranged and in an alien faith. From 
time to time’ it drove them through the streets with the cry of 
“Hep, Hep” (Hierosolyma est perdita—Jerusalem is lost). By 
adherents of that same faith also were slaughtered Jewish com- 
munities during the mid-fourteenth century Black Plague 
on the slanderous charge that they had poisoned the wells. 
Special taxation, humiliating as well as burdensome, was im- 
posed upon Jews in nearly every European land in the Middle 
Ages. At the end of the fourteenth century Spain forced them 
into the Church at the sword’s point. The Inquisition pun- 
ished those who secretly adhered to their ancestral faith. Where 
Christians and Jews were living in accord high ecclesiastical 
dignitaries through pulpit fulminations broke up those cordial 
relations. 

So the medieval Jew acquired a very bitter concept of a faith 
that shut him, out from civil posts and many handicrafts and 
often despoiled him of his property, at times with State sanction, 
and frequently banished him by harsh edict after he had been 
despoiled. 

With the softening influence of time we modern Jews realize 
that the Christian religion was not responsible for this savage 
treatment, but only the persons who misinterpreted it. It was 
a brutal era rightly deserving the title Dark Ages—an era in 


234 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


which bigotry was virtue and toleration was sin. For in that 
gloomy period the Church at times was not much kinder to 
some of its own votaries who did not accept the orthodoxy of 
the hour. Hence the massacre of Albigenses and also of Hugue- 
nots, the St. Bartholomew night, the cruelty of Alva in the 
Netherlands, and the Thirty Years’ War. “Waters cannot rise 
higher than their source.” The blame must not fall upon the 
faith but upon the individual. 

Fortunately there is another and a brighter side to the story. 
As against those who resorted to all sorts of intimidation to 
force the Jew into the Church, Charlemagne sent to the Orient 
for Jewish scholars to teach their own co-religionists in Nar- 
bonne and Mayence. His humane policy was followed by his 
son King Louis I of France, who changed the market day 
from Saturday to Sunday for Jewish accommodation. 

The first crusaders savagely attacked the Jews in the Rhine 
provinces, but the bishops of Cologne and of Speyer defended 
them against the mob; and in the Second Crusade Bernard 
of Clairvaux nobly espoused their cause and condemned their 
persecutors. Persistently and in different lands the slander was 
fabricated against Israel that they slew Christian children to 
use their blood for Passover bread, a calumny that has not yet 
died out. But there were popes not a few who issued bulls 
to their bishops, stigmatizing the charge as a wicked calumny 
and as against the spirit of Jewish law and practice. Among 
those popes we may mention Innocent IV and Gregory X of 
the thirteenth century, Martin V and Nicholas V of the fif- 
teenth century, and Paul III of the sixteenth. The learned 
Christian professor Hermann L. Strack has not only traced the 
sources of this slander, but shown that in antiquity a similar 
charge equally false was brought against the Christian in con- 
nection with his Sacrament. 

When, the Benedictine monks in the year 1500 sought to 
destroy the Talmud (just as it had been burnt in Paris two hun- 
dred and fifty years earlier), John Reuchlin, the Christian hu- 
manist and a renowned Hebrew scholar, came forward and 
defended it in the famous words, “Do not burn the Talmud, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 235 


try to understand it; burning is no argument.” At least in his 
earlier stage, Martin Luther scathingly rebuked the perse- 
cution of the Jews, whom he styled the “‘best blood on earth, 
through whom alone the Holy Spirit gave the Holy Scriptures 
to the world”. Alas, to think that in his days of later bitter- 
ness he should have turned against them! 

Many Puritans of Cromwell’s day advocated the restoration 
of the Jews banished in 1290, and in consequence they were 
actually readmitted in 1657. These Puritans were particularly 
enamored of the Hebrew Scriptures; some came to regard the 
Jews not as the outcasts of God but rather as His elect. 

Among modern advocates Jews gratefully remember the 
Christian scholar Franz Delitzsch, who deliberately exposed 
all those malevolent spirits that endeavored to misrepresent Jew- 
ish teaching, among whom J. A. Eisenmenger was the chief 
offender. They also gladly recall the tribute of Father Hya- 
cinthe, who declared, ‘““We are Christians, and as such we must 
not forget that it was from Israel’s bosom we have sprung.” 
Then there was Ernest Renan, who said, “Examine at close 
range the enemies of Judaism and, in general, you will find they 
are enemies of the modern spirit.” 

Few have presented the cause of Israel more powerfully than 
Ephraim Lessing in his plays “The Jew” and “Nathan the 
Wise”. Other notable writers, too, have come forward and 
championed Israel wronged, such as P. Le Roy Beaulieu in 
his “Israel among the Nations’; Lord Macaulay in his essay 
on the “Disabilities of the Jews”; and George Eliot in “Hep, 
Hep” in her “Theophrastus Such” and in “Daniel Deronda”. 
Let us not forget, among kindly spirits, Tobias Smollett and 
Richard Cumberland. We gratefully note that many a Chris- 
tian divine today speaks appreciatively of the domestic life of 
the Jewish people and in his pulpit points to the purity of the 
Jewish home as a fine example. R. T. Herford has written 
two books in appreciation of the much misunderstood Pharisees. 

The British government’s Balfour Declaration encouraged 
Jewish settlement in Palestine, giving them a voice in its ad- 
ministration, appointing a Jew as the first high commissioner, 


236 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


making Hebrew one of its official tongues, and thereby in- 
augurating a new era for Israel in the land of its fathers. 

It is gratifying to report reciprocal appreciation. Although 
some Jews have assumed a bitter and condemnatory attitude 
towards the Church, wrung from the agony of their martyrdom, 
there are in our records pleasing variations. ‘These notably in 
countries of the Iberian peninsula; for there Israel experienced 
a golden era of toleration and liberality, chiefly under Moslem 
but also under Christian rule, from the ninth to the fourteenth 
centuries. Under such benign auspices Jews produced many 
philosophers, poets, translators, and biblical expounders. Of 
these our greatest philosopher, Moses Maimonides, said: 
“Christianity has done more to spread abroad the Bible than 
Judaism itself. Wherever it carried trade it carried the Bible, 
doing Jewish work with non-Jewish hands.” Jehuda Halevi, 
the poet, expressed a similar appreciation. The Scholastic 
philosophers Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns 
Scotus owe much to the philosophic work, “The Source of 
Life”, of the Hebrew philosopher Ibn Gabirol (though they 
did not know the author was a Jew). Furthermore, through 
translations, many Hebrew scholars such as Ibn Ezra, a biblical 
critic, and Elias del Mendigo, a versatile scholar of Italy, 
brought a knowledge of Aristotle, through the Arabic, to the 
Christian world. Here they were “middlemen” in an intel- 
lectual sense. With the kindlier relation that is being fostered 
between Jew and Christian since the emancipating French Rey- 
olution, Jewish scholars have come forward to express their ap- 
preciation of Christian teachings. Among the most notable 
of these are Dr. Claude G. Montefiore in his books and articles 
in appreciation of Jesus and St. Paul, Dr. Israel Abrahams of 
Cambridge in his “Pharisaism and the Gospel”, and Dr. Joseph 
Klausner of Jerusalem in his “Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, 
Times, and Teaching”. 

The modern Jewish pulpit is ending the long silence of Israel 
about Jesus of Nazareth and is beginning to class him among 
the sages of Israel. Now that kindlier relations are setting in 
the Jew should try to learn more intimately the character 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 237 


of the faith of his neighbors and cease withholding appreci- 
ation when due. Let the Jew realize the nobility of Francis 
‘of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, Let us be magnani- 
mous enough to realize the splendid service done by Christian 
missionaries in Eastern lands, in bringing to the Orient the 
civilization of Christendom and thereby raising the status of 
woman. Here is a service wholly humane rendered in darkest 
Africa and in the interior of China. Father Damien of the 
Catholic Church, who spent his life in a leper colony is, most 
will agree, as noble a type as any of its canonized saints. 

In paying this tribute I am but following in the footsteps of 
that great Christian scholar Max Miller, who through his 
mastery of languages revealed something of the grandeur of 
the Eastern Scriptures, notably that of the Vedas. He took 
occasion to remark to his Christian co-religionists that they 
should not hesitate to discover the best in faiths other than their 
own, nor need they feel that Christianity would suffer in the 
comparison. So in that spirit let Jew and Christian both pay 
their tribute to Buddha, Confucius, and Zoroaster, and duly 
realize the hand of divine Providence in inspiring them to bring 
spiritual messages to their people. 

We Jews feel aggrieved at the persistent attempt of some 
church people to carry on missions among Jews, of all people, 
as though they were benighted and needed to be taught a knowl- 
edge of a just and loving God and a moral law. Vast sums 
are expended for this purpose, and converts from Judaism 
are brought into requisition. To the Jew it brings to mind the 
Holy Cross Day, when Jews were compelled to attend church 
and listen to sermons denouncing their own religion. It also 
recalls the age of disputations, when Jews were compelled to 
defend their faith in public debates in Spain. It was perilous 
for them to lose, but still more perilous for them to win. I 
hope that both Jew and Christian are today wise enough to 
know that the verity of a religion is not a matter of syllogistic 
argument. 

Since 1879 a complete political movement has been called 
into existence known as anti-Semitism, whose baleful purpose 


¥ 


238 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


has been and still is to foment ill will against the Jew. It has 
continued as a political party, penetrating Austria and France, 
and revived with new virulence since the World War. Israel’s 
unsleeping opponents devised a plot more outrageous still. An 
elaborate forgery was deliberately fabricated, charging the Jew 
with a secret conspiracy to overthrow Christendom. Starting 
in Russia, it was carried through Germany, France, and Eng- 
land. Known as the “Jewish peril”, it was brought across the 
ocean to the United States. 

These modern detractors have not the excuse of the medieval 
persecutors actuated by religious fanaticism. How can the 
modern Christian expect to foster better understanding when 
Jews are pogrommed in Russia, boycotted in Poland, bombed 
in Austria, almost shut out from the schools of Hungary and 
Rumania, and declared unpatriotic in the United States? 

We feel that here the reputation of Christianity rather than 
of Judaism is at stake, that Christians are not living up to the 
standards of their own spiritual progenitors, and that they are 
making a misnomer of the phrase “Christian virtue” and deny- 
ing the “good tidings of peace and good will” which the Church 
would fain bring to the world. We do not overlook the fact 
that anti-Semitism is not a crusade of Christians, as Christians, 
against the Jew, or a church movement in any respect. We 
deplore the mistaken zeal of some sincere Christians to con- 
vert Jews to their religion, but we recognize they are prompted 
by an amiable motive. This is entirely opposed to the antag- 
onism of the anti-Semite, which is venom unrelieved. 

The ill will between Jew and Christian will only cease when 
each makes an honest effort to understand the other better. Tt 
is gratifying indeed to acknowledge that an honest attempt is 
being made by liberal Christians and Jews today to enter into 
closer and kindlier affiliations. 

There was called into being some thirty years ago a New 
York State Conference of Religion, composed of Christians and 
Jews of all shades of belief. Its motto was, “religions are 
many, religion is one.” It also issued a book of common wor- 
ship. In 1920 there was organized in England a League of 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 239 


Religions. Christian clergymen and Jewish divines served on 
its committees. In December 1924 a Committee on Good Will 
between Jews and Christians of the Federal Council, and the 
Committee of the Central Conference for American Rabbis, 
met for the purpose of acquaintance, understanding, and the fix- 
ing of a policy of closer co-operation. Their programme was 
endorsed by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 
January, 1925, at its convention in St. Louis. The Independent 
Order of the B’Nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant, a benevolent 
order) endorsed these resolutions in April, 1925. ‘They were 
further accepted at a meeting of the New York State Federa- 
tion of Temple Sisterhoods. 

To this group of projects for mutual fellowship, one final 
instance may be added. At the annual General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church of England in May, 1925, in London, 
it was advocated that a complete change of attitude toward 
Judaism be taken on the question of missions to the Jews. 

Both the Jewish and Christian creeds turn for their inspira- 
tion to the Hebrew Scriptures. Even here the Jew has not 
been quite fairly dealt with; references to the sternness of God 
are emphasized, and His gracious mercy in the Old Testament 
rather ignored. How many understand that the Book of Jonah 
is not history but parable, teaching the lesson of a Hebrew 
prophet summoned to preach a message of salvation to an alien 
people of a different cult and rebuked because of his exclusive 
narrowness? 

We gratefully acknowledge that modern Christian scholars no 
longer mistranslate the Hebrew of the prophets to make them 
fit Christian doctrines. Let each creed seek to know the truth 
of the other: then, in the words of Jesus, The truth will make 
us free. It might be wished that the Protestant Church knew 
the debt of Luther, when making his German translation of the 
Bible, to the biblical commentator Solomon Rashi, an ex- 
pounder of Jewish law, born in Troyes in 1040; and the 
debt of the English translators in the days of James I to the 
Hebrew scholar David Kimchi, a grammarian and commentator 
who flourished in southern France in the twelfth century. 


240 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Neither the Church nor the Synagogue has yet risen to the 
lofty heights of its own best traditions, though each in turn is 
gradually shedding its elements of exclusiveness. ‘The creeds 
are coming closer together with the tendency of the modern 
Church to bring out the human side of Jesus, with the tendency 
of the modern Synagogue to subordinate ceremonial. In the 
older day it was regarded as the pious duty to emphasize 
divergence. We all recognize it as our human duty to em- 
Phasize agreements. Religions have still to learn that they 
must replace competition by co-operation. Time was when each 
religion claimed monopoly of spiritual truth and regarded all 
other creeds as so many different forms of error. We are now 
beginning to learn the validity of faiths other than our own. 
Judaism and Christianity are distinct religions, and we neither 
can nor need endeavor to explain their differences away. Both 
religions stand for certain vital principles on which the welfare 
of the world depends. To promulgate those principles Chris- 
tian and Jew must each work toward the same end. 

What are those common principles? The recognition of a 
spiritual Father and a divine Providence watching over all; 
our belief in a moral law at the heart of the universe; the 
recognition of the human soul touched with the divine; the 
realization of the kinship of the human race; our sense of 
responsibility toward our fellow-men; our accountability to our 
Maker; and finally, the sanctity of human life. Jew and Chris- 
tian must stand together as against those who would shatter these 
categorical imperatives. Looking backward, we have a common 
root in the Hebrew Scriptures; looking forward, we have a 
common goal cherished by both religions, in a millennium of 
peace and good will. 


AGGAV AXONANOLSV TS 


“pry sabpne QO) 





AAGIV NYALNIL 








CHAPTER XXI 


A MOSLEM VIEW OF CHRISTENDOM 


While Jews and Christians have lived intermingled, the contacts between Mo- 
hammedans and Christians have been much less close and for the most part 
have been complicated by the conflicts between East and West. A Christian 
view of Islam has been given in an earlier volume of our series; now a repre- 
sentative of Islam states his candid opinion of Christendom. 

Y purpose is to take a survey of Christendom as a 
Moslem sees it. My object is not to produce a 
polemical tract or to discuss or expound abstract or 

speculative doctrines. I shall not indulge in destructive criti- 
cism. I have been all my life a Moslem, and I sincerely believe 
in the truth and spiritual power of the message of Islam. But 
I have lived in intimate contact with people professing other 
creeds. In particular I have lived and been educated in Europe, 
and studied the history and the varying thoughts of Christen- 
dom in its manifold phases. I know that these have exercised, 
are exercising, and are likely to exercise in the future a very 
important influence on the evolution of our human destiny. 
It is my wish that what I write may be helpful in producing 
mutual understanding between what in my opinion are wrongly 
but popularly considered opposing views of thought and life. 
We are speaking of Christendom, not of Christianity. We 
are not, therefore, discussing the abstract doctrines of Chris- 
tianity or its historical growth, but are merely taking a general 
view of a certain phase of human society which has well-marked 
characteristics geographically and culturally. I do not think I 
can say that there are also common characteristics from a re- 
ligious point of view. For what is Christendom? To define it 
as meaning all countries professing the Christian religion would 
be merely a verbal definition without definite facts to support 
241 


242 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


if. There is no such thing as the Christian religion or a Chris- 
tian religion. Observable within Christendom are schools of 
thought, church organizations, and systems of practical ethics 
almost as far apart as such things are in religions formally 
classified as different. Many phases of Unitarian thought are 
scarcely distinguishable from the liberal schools of Islam. 

On the other hand, some of the extreme forms of hierarchical 
Christianity approach very closely to the priestly religions of 
Brahmanism or the formalism or the ecclesiastical exclusive- 
ness of Thibetan Buddhism. Nor can we define Christendom 
on a purely territorial basis, although we could speak loosely 
of Europe, America, and Australasia, with the Union of South 
Africa, as Christendom. A more accurate way would be to de- 
scribe Christendom as that atmosphere of private, social, and 
public life which owes its origin to modern European civiliza- 
tion. In this way we apply the word Christendom to just those 
circles of South Africa which reflect European life in that tract, 
but exclude from it those other circles in the same tract which 
are ruled by different cultural and social ideas, even though the 
prevailing religion in those circles may call itself by the name 
of Christianity. 

In a classification of the chief religions of the world, the 
vast mass of primitive ideas usually grouped under the term 
Animism, and including the obscure fetishism and taboos of 
primitive tribes in Africa, Australia, America, and Asia, and 
the isolated Oceanic islands, would account for some 200 mil- 
lions of mankind. Of the three great religions of modern Asia, 
Hinduism is compact geographically, but diffused and ill- 
defined as to its doctrines. It may be taken to comprise about 
210 millions. Buddhism is a little more precise in its original 
ideas and doctrines, but its historical growth and its sharp divi- 
sion into Mahayana and Hinayana have been attended by the 
growth of numerous sects in Central and Far Eastern Asia. In 
China and Japan its intimate alliance with Confucianism, 
Taoism, and Shintoism has added further vagueness to its 
boundaries. If we take Buddhism together with its allied re- 
ligions and philosophies, we may assign the figure 400 millions 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 243 


to its adherents, and this may be an under-estimate. Islam is, 
next to Christianity, the most widely diffused geographically of 
all the religions; its adherents may possibly number between 
250 and 300 millions. 

There remain the two other great Asiatic religions, of com- 
paratively little importance in modern Asia, whose adherents 
are mainly found in what we have called Christendom. One is 
Judaism, which, in its contact with Christendom, has imbibed 
a spirit that enables it to work as one of the churches (if I 
may use the term) of Christendom. The number of Jews may 
be put down roughly at 13 millions. For Christianity, the main 
religion of Christendom,—if we do not separate the statistics 
of the various forms of free thought,—we arrive at an approxi- 
mate figure of 570 millions. This would give us about 1643 
millions as the figure for the total population of the world, so 
far as our classification is exhaustive, and would show Chris- 
tianity to be the religion of almost one-third of mankind. 

Taking the Christian churches separately we may say that 
the various churches of the East, such as the Syrian Jacobites, 
the Chaldeans, the Coptic and Abyssinian churches, are merely 
fragments of certain ancient communions which, in the course 
of history, have been practically wiped out. One such Church 
was the Nestorian, which was looked upon as heretical in the 
West but which played an important part in western and central 
Asia for many centuries. It is arguable that practically new 
religions were founded with lasting results to the progress of 
humanity, when the new Graeco-Roman Church was evolved 
which afterwards split up into the Church of Rome and the 
Eastern or Byzantine Church, and again when the great protest 
was made by Luther which started the Protestant movements. 
The Oriental churches properly so-called (not to be confounded 
with the Eastern or Byzantine Church) were extinguished as an 
appreciable force with the establishment and spread of Islam. 
The Moslem view is that Christianity, which was a true religion 
inspired by God, had completed its period and spent its force 
by the time of the advent of the Prophet Mohammed, and that 
his preaching and ministry purified the faith again and placed 


244 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


religious institutions once more on the progressive basis in- 
volved in the universal plan of God. 

Quite early in the history of the Christian movement a split 
between two schools of thought was disclosed. One school 
was that of the Judaizing Christians, represented by Nazarenes, 
Ebionites, and others. ‘The second we may call the school of 
the Gentile Christians. The Judaizing school was represented 
by the apocalyptic literature and by men like the Apostle 
John, or whoever wrote the Apocalypse. The Gentile school 
was represented by the Acts and some of the Epistles in the 
modern Canon of the New Testament, and by men like St. 
Paul, a Roman citizen, whose bent of mind was practical and 
partook of the Roman genius for organization. The Jewish 
Christians soon disappeared from history in the West, but 
Roman Christianity (if I may use that term) flourished and 
became the religion of the Roman Empire in the reign of Con- 
stantine the Great. By then its population consisted probably 
of more non-Romans than Romans. The non-Romans com- 
prised the highly intellectual and speculative Greeks, as well 
as the Latinized barbarians, or particularly the Germanic 
peoples of the north who were spreading all over Europe. 
In those early days the dominant note in doctrine, literature, and 
culture was Greek, while the dominant note in organization 
and government was Roman or Latin—Latin in the sense of 
including the Latinized barbarians. 

The dividing of the Roman Empire into two parts, the 
Eastern and the Western Roman empires, did not cause a com- 
plete schism between the Greek and the Latin churches, 
although after the political bond had been broken the eventual 
ecclesiastic schism became only a question of time. From the 
days of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), that is, from about 
the period of the Prophet’s life (569-632), the friction between 
Rome and Constantinople began to increase, until in 1054, in 
a difference over a question of doctrine, Pope Leo IX excom- 
municated the Patriarch of Constantinople and the patriarch 
refused to acknowledge the pope’s authority. 

The Church of Rome is still strong, and its influence is yet 


WAAVAd 








THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 245 


extending in many directions. Its history is bound up with the 
religious and cultural developments of medieval Europe. 
Movements like the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth cen- 
tury in England show that its attraction for intellectual, artistic, 
and ascetic minds is still a factor to be reckoned with. Its growth 
in the United States shows that its powers of organization and 
adaptation tell in its favor in a free country. 

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the development of 
Scholasticism as the intellectual side of the Roman Catholic 
Church is directly traceable to the study of Arabian philosophy, 
which was the sole repository of Aristotle’s philosophy. There 
is much that is common to medieval Arabian thought and 
Scholastic philosophy. Monasticism, however congenial it 
might have been to the spirit of primitive Christianity and of 
the Eastern churches properly so-called, accorded ill with the 
life of the Roman Empire, whether Latin or barbarian. The 
wonderful transformation of monasticism into the orders of 
practical service, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and 
Augustinians is greatly to the credit of the progressive and 
practical forces at work in the life of the Church. These forces, 
however, were soon neutralized by the corruption and luxury 
that marked the life of the later Middle Ages. The crusaders 
of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries brought or- 
ganized Western Christianity face to face with Islam. The 
social and political effects were far-reaching, and in strengthen- 
ing the political and military instincts of Europe weakened the 
life of the Church. The medieval struggle between the empire 
and the papacy was a phase of the age-long conflict of two 
great principles in human society, the secular against the re- 
ligious, the temporal against the ecclesiastical—the domina- 
tion of the soldier and the statesman against that of the priest 
armed with spiritual powers and clothed with authority, wealth, 
and titles. 

All these matters were brought to a climax with the Ref- 
ormation. To my mind Protestantism was a threefold revolt— 
against ecclesiasticism, or the massing of worldly power and 
authority in the hands of priests; against monasticism or asceti- 


246 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


cism, the ideal involved in the sacrifice of natural human in- 
stincts, not by individual will but by collective institutions; 
against obscurantism, or the idea that the higher mysteries were 
not only beyond the understanding of the common mass of 
mankind, but were meant to be preserved in special forms or 
in a special sacred language. The Reformation was not in its 
inception an assertion of the right of private judgment, which 
many of the Protestant churches rejected; nor of the principle 
of toleration, for many of the Protestant churches practised per- 
secution; nor of the principle “My Kingdom is not of this 
world”, since most of the Protestant churches allied themselves 
with princes and used politics and war as their weapons in their 
fight against Roman Catholicism and against each other; nor 
an enthusiastic acceptance of the new learning of the Renas- 
cence, towards which the Roman Catholic Church was more 
sympathetic than were the Protestant churches of the time. 

In so far as there was a protest against these three principles, 
a Moslem feels that the Protestant churches were carrying out 
the principles for which Islam stood and stands; and that in 
this way the course of history justifies the eternal “Message”, 
even though its fulfilment takes shapes and names entirely dif- 
ferent from those to which he is accustomed. The Reformation, 
whatever its earlier limitations may have been, led to a gradual 
emancipation of the mind of Christendom in all directions. It 
involved consequences hardly foreseen by either its leaders or 
its opponents. 

The process of liberalization acted not only in the Protestant 
churches and in the progressive growth of what are called the 
free churches, but also reacted on movements within the Roman 
Catholic Church itself. The theocratic ideas of Calvinism and 
its gloomy or exclusive outlook soon wore off. Puritanical out- 
bursts went the way of all extreme movements, and left as their 
result greater freedom of conscience and a juster and saner 
appreciation of the fruits of the Renascence. The national 
established churches, whether Catholic as the Church of Eng- 
land or Calvinist as the churches of Scotland, Holland, and 
Switzerland, or Lutheran as the churches of Germany and 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 247 


Scandinavia, soon settled down, in spite of internal and external 
troubles, to a life of authority and stability, coupled with power 
and prestige. But with these characteristics go special dangers, 
and the established churches presently found themselves lifeless, 
while the fresh sap of vigor flowed through those younger 
churches which grew up in an atmosphere of greater freedom 
of thought and a more scientific understanding of man’s emo- 
tional and social nature. 

No event in history has played a larger part in this develop- 
ment than the peopling of America. In the spiritual emancipa- 
tion that went with new conditions of physical, social, and 
economic life all America participated. But the Anglo-Saxon 
expansion in America was pre-eminent in developing those 
notable traits of independence of character and a love of 
downright plain speaking and plain thinking which have trans- 
formed not only American religion but American diplomacy, 
social conventions, and business methods. What took place in 
America reacted on the British people and the peoples of 
Europe by means of literature, the press, and international 
intercourse. 

Wesley’s movement in the Church of England, and the Evan- 
gelical Revival associated with it, are parallel with the concur- 
rent movement in English politics towards an appeal to the 
judgment of the plain man—an appeal which led to the vision 
of democracy in the modern and best sense of the term. For 
there is a spiritual idea in democracy corresponding to the ideal 
of brotherhood in a Church or religious society. And that idea 
has flourished and borne fruit in Christendom in a measure not 
possible in caste-ridden or priest-ridden societies. 

A new chapter in the external relations of Christendom opens 
with the growth of the modern missionary movement from the 
eighteenth century onwards. It is a very different movement 
from the earlier movements of the crusaders or the conqutsta- 
dores, or the so-called Acts of Faith, the terrible sentences 
of the courts of the Inquisition. The Portuguese and the Span- 
iards went to convert or exterminate, with the further motives 
of greed of gold or land, or lust of conquest and enslavement. 


248 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


The modern missionary movements are fortunately free from 
these terrible features; but they are not, it must be confessed, 
always free from those gentler deceptions which are the 
products of political motives or the false and anti-religious feel- 
ings of racial arrogance. There are devoted men and women 
in the missionary field whose labors have been free from any 
such taints; but that of professionalism is inevitable where large 
bodies of average men and women are organized for any sus- 
tained and systematic campaigns. It may be doubted whether, 
apart from educational gains, or medical relief, or industrial 
or agricultural training the mere process of conversion has led 
to substantial results. Some competent authorities assert the 
contrary. In dealing with the primitive races the cultural im- 
provement following upon contact with a higher civilization 
is an unquestionable gain. Yet it is more a cultural or social 
gain than a religious one, and it involves new problems of a 
very complicated nature which were unknown in the previous 
history of mankind. 

In relation to the races of old civilizations, such as those of 
Asia, the problems, the difficulties, and the solutions are all en- 
tirely different. Contact with missionaries from Christendom 
has led to revivals of the older religions of Asia, and on the 
whole, among Moslems at least, actual religious conversions 
have been rare. It is beginning to be recognized that the aim 
of missionary activity in such fields should no longer be mere 
conversion but the leavening and permeation of older societies 
with the new ideas of Christendom. From this point of view, 
however, political and economic contact is much more influ- 
ential on the social side, and intellectual and cultural contact 
on the spiritual side, than are direct missionary agencies. 

The recognition of these facts has led to the formation of 
non-sectarian or non-denominational agencies. The Salvation 
Army, although its activities are expressed in terms of an ex- 
treme form of evangelical religion, is really an agency for social 
amelioration. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Chris- 
tian Associations cater to another stratum of society and on other 
lines, but with the same idea of helping people socially or 





anes 


MOSQUE AT 


i oie 








ita 


THE TOMBS OF THE CALIPHS, CAIRO 








Aa 


MOH 











S Alert PR 





AYER 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 249 


economically, or affording facilities for innocent recreation. 
The Christian Science movement, professedly religious and in 
some respects sectarian, may properly be classed with these un- 
denominational movements, although it has its special features 
such as faith healing in addition to its social activities. 
The Theosophical movement with its doctrines about incarna- 
tional and spiritual mysteries aims at a synthesis of Eastern and 
Western religions. 

In addition to these undenominational movements, operating 
in the name of religion, there are societies frankly non-religious, 
although partaking of the social and intellectual characteristics 
of the semi-religious bodies. Such are the Ethical societies, 
the Labor churches or churches of Humanity, the New 
Thought movements, the Anthroposophists, and other societies 
with other quaint titles. At the end of the scale, and perhaps 
growing in numbers on account of the silent social and economic 
revolution proceeding before our very eyes, there is evident 
under the names of the labor movement or of socialism or 
communism a widespread anti-religious movement. It may 
be called militant secularism; it either ignores God and spir- 
itual values or actively combats religious ideas and the belief 
in God as worn-out superstitions, or an artful device of priest- 
craft, or an anodyne with which vested interests protect their 
own privileges. , 

The widening of the religious horizon makes it possible for 
us to view many of these movements as parts of a whole. We 
can now understand even some of the sceptical or agnostic 
schools as helping in the religious evolution of mankind and 
converging towards the goal of common religious ideas. When 
the Higher Criticism first addressed itself to the historical 
problem of religion in Christendom, it was looked upon as 
subverting the very foundations of religion. Time has shown 
that a valuable contribution to the psychological study of man 
in relation to religion has been made. The science and litera- 
ture of Comparative Religion are also helping in the formation 
of a religious conscience free from bias and willing to recog- 
nize that the different races and cultures share in the religious 


250 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


evolution of man. To use the language of Ghazzali the Mos- 
lem philosopher, the only real Being is God, from whom all 
other forms of being are merely reflections or derivatives, as 
the light of the moon is a reflection or the light of a candle 
is a derivative of the light of the sun. There are those to whom 
a perfect God, or an all-wise, all-powerful, or all-knowing God 
is a stumbling block—those who would rather have an imper- 
fect evolving God, one with no power or wisdom or will 
beyond that which our growing humanity might be disposed 
to reflect. Yet, to my mind, even such speculations as these 
indicate the desire of the human spirit to break away from the 
thraldom of second-hand ideas and merely traditional modes of 
thought. As such I welcome them. But I feel sure that they are 
mere stepping-stones to the understanding of true religion. For 
true religion must bring us into intimate and not mere casual 
contact with the essence of that spiritual Being in whose 
image, according to both the Bible and the Koran, we are 
created. 

This is the mystical side of religion. On the practical side is 
a recognition of the brotherhood of mankind, the chief point 
of the last great speech which the Prophet Mohammed de- 
livered as a charge to his people. Such a recognition has often 
been acknowledged, but has rarely been carried out in actual 
practice. Attempts to build up international political institu- 
tions, however tentative and experimental they may be in 
checking national vanity and selfishness, are not only a part 
of our political or social evolution but also a part of our re- 
ligious evolution, which must touch all phases of our human 
activities. 

In this sense I look upon the movement for the emancipation 
of women as being also part and parcel of the spiritual evolu- 
tion of mankind. The world-wide movement for redressing the 
wrongs of class against class, sex against sex, age against age, 
intellect against emotion, social gifts against individual insight, 
discipline against freedom—all these have their dark and un- 
tenable side. But that is only an ephemeral phase, behind and 
beyond which looms the spiritual redemption of all mankind. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 251 


Vicarious redemption seems to me unmeaning; but redemption 
by the spirit’s striving ceaselessly and with all its might (Jihad 
or Ijtihad, in Moslem terminology) seems to be almost a law 
of the spiritual world, as mighty and universal as the law of 
gravitation in the world of nature. 

There are many indications pointing to a re-mingling of the 
broken rays of spiritual understanding. In Christendom many 
of the churches are showing a disposition to unite. On the other 
hand, various groupings and re-groupings are taking form in 
the religious life of the East. World missionary conferences 
have taken place, which, though the discussions have been 
purely from the point of view of Christendom, have yet intro- 
duced a wider and freer atmosphere. Is it too much to be- 
lieve that they may lead to the cherishing of a higher hoper 

Between Islam and Christendom there are and have been 
many points of contact, in amity as well as in hostility. But 
hostility must decline as opposed to our spiritual evolution, 
and cordiality must grow as being consonant (as I understand 
it) with the larger purpose of divine Providence. 


CHAPTER XXII 
A HINDU VIEW OF CHRISTENDOM 


The writers of the two foregoing chapters have noted that the attitude to 
Christianity of the members of their faiths has by no means been only hostile, 
that both Jews and Moslems have appropriated and welcomed Christian ele- 
ments. To an even more marked degree a similar acceptance is taking place 
in Hinduism, the religion that has virtually absorbed the Buddhism of India. 
PEAKING at the annual Buddha celebration at Calcutta 
in 1924, Mahatma Gandhi said: “Hundreds of Chris- 
tian friends still consider that I am a Christian, and some 
Christian friends do not even hesitate to ascribe by implica- 
tion cowardice to me and say to me, ‘We know you are a 
Christian, but you are afraid to own it. Why don’t you come 
forward boldly and say that you believe in Jesus and his Salva- 
tionr’” He went on to declare: “For me, however, I regard 
myself as one of the humblest of Hindus, but the deeper I study 
Hinduism the stronger becomes the belief in me that Hinduism 
is as broad as the universe, and it takes in its hold all that 
is good in the world. Something within me tells me that for all 
that deep veneration I show to the several religions, I am all 
the more and not the less a Hindu.” 

Hinduism makes no distinction between philosophy and re- 
ligion, and the educated Hindu is brought up to regard the 
whole universe as the sphere of religion. He feels great diffi- 
culty in accepting as his religion a teaching confined to human 
conduct in the various relations of life. Schopenhauer pointed 
out as a serious defect in Christianity the lack of just con- 
sideration for animals. 

Another matter in which Christianity appears to Hindus to 
be defective is the absence of a distinct prohibition, such as 
exists in the Hindu and Mohammedan religions, against the 

252 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 253 


use of wine. The adoption of the policy of prohibition by the 
United States of America, by constitutional amendment, has 
produced a deep and lasting impression in Asia. ‘That memor- 
able step brings America into line with Indian national senti- 
ment as embodied in the religious precepts of the two major 
communities which together make up nearly the whole popu- 
lation of India. The movement to adopt “total prohibition” 
as the policy of the Indian administration is fast gathering 
strength, stimulated by America’s example. ‘The Protestant 
Christian missions are practically unanimous in their support 
of the movement. Many Indian Christians, on the other hand, 
including almost the whole body of Roman Catholics, hold that 
while the ban on liquors may be obligatory on Hindus and 
Mohammedans, the Christian religion does not require any such 
abstinence from them. The attitude of the Christian world 
toward prohibition cannot fail greatly to influence the attitude 
of the non-Christian world toward Christianity. 

If I were asked to state what the distinctive contribution of 
Christian thought to Indian thought is, one which cannot be 
traced to any other religious source, I should unhesitatingly 
say: the ideal of a single standard in sexual conduct for men 
and women. Neither Hinduism, nor Islam, nor Buddhism can 
claim any original share in this idea which today is influencing 
every social and religious reform movement in India. Many 
Hindu saints have preached against caste. Islam has often pro- 
claimed in more insistent tones than the Christian Church the 
brotherhood of man. Buddhism and Sikhism admitted the low- 
est castes to their folds. But Christianity alone has stood for 
this single standard for men and women. There is no parallel 
in any religion to Jesus Christ’s memorable rebuke to those 
who brought before him the woman taken in adultery and for 
whom the Jewish Law prescribed stoning to death as the pen- 
alty: “Let him who is sinless among you cast the first stone.” 

India and Asia are in debt to Christianity for this great gift. 
After all, the main difference between the Asiatic and Western 
civilizations centers in this point. Turkey, Egypt, India, China, 
Japan have now, in principle, accepted this ideal, pre-eminently 


254 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Christian. When it is fully infused into their civilizations, 
as it will soon be, the East and the West will find many barriers, 
today apparently impenetrable between them, give way. 

No systems of thought can come into contact, much less re- 
main in contact for so long a period as, in India, Buddhism, 
Judaism, Christianity, Parsiism, and Mohammedanism have 
been in contact with Hinduism, without their influencing each 
other. India is the one country in the world in which all these 
great religions are represented by communities of considerable 
antiquity. Buddhism is popularly said to have been driven out 
of India, but really it became absorbed and lives in Hinduism. 
The Jews found a home in Malabar almost from the date of 
the Second Dispersion. The Syrian Christians in the same 
province have a tradition extending almost to the first century 
after Christ; the Parsis after the Mohammedan conquest of 
Persia found an asylum in Gujarat and are today a flourishing 
community in Bombay. There were Arab colonies in India 
even before the rise of Islam, and since then, of course, Moham- 
medanism has become the religion of the largest number of 
the people in India next only to Hinduism. 

The caste organization of the Hindus was a barrier to social 
fusion; and as social intercourse, in the days before the in- 
vention of printing, was the main channel of intellectual 
intercourse it also operated to a large extent as a hindrance to 
the free exchange of ideas. This Hindu institution came to 
be adopted in one form or another by the communities which 
settled in the country before the Mohammedan conquest. Even 
the Mohammedans and the later converts to Christianity have 
not been able altogether to escape the contagion of caste. 

But even caste cannot wholly prevent intensely religious 
communities, living side by side, from feeling a curiosity to 
know something of their neighbors’ beliefs. Not improbably 
there was more than one Hindu Nicodemus who sought out by 
night a leading Jewish or Christian or Zoroastrian teacher to 
learn from him the secret of his faith. Inquirers of other faiths, 
too, must have similarly found means of acquiring some knowl- 
edge of the tenets of that immense social-religious system whose. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 255 


hospitality had given them an asylum, such as then was to be 
found nowhere else, in which they were free to worship God 
in their own traditional way. 

Prior to the sixteenth century the Christians remained as 
the Jews and the Parsis are today, a non-proselytizing sect 
following their ancient customs; and such influence as Chris- 
tianity exerted on Hindu religious thought was purely doctrinal. 
The doctrine of divine grace, well developed in the Saiva and 
Vaishnava sects which arose in southern India, was probably a 
result of that early contact with Christianity. In the sixteenth 
century, however, active efforts were made by Christian mis- 
sions to convert Hindus. The Inquisition was set up at Goa, 
the capital of Portuguese India, and a considerable number of 
Hindus were added to the Roman Catholic Church. When 
ultimately the British East India Company established its 
supremacy after overthrowing its other European rivals, Chris- 
tian missionaries were not at first permitted to do propagandist 
work. This prohibition was subsequently withdrawn; and now 
for nearly one hundred years various Protestant missions have 
also been at work. According to the census of 1921 there are 
about four and one-half million Indian Christians to a popula- 
tion of three hundred and eighteen millions. The Roman Cath- 
olics number about two and one-half millions, and the remaining 
two millions are divided among a dozen or more Protestant 
denominations, of which the Anglicans and the Baptists, each 
with about half a million adherents, are the two largest. 

The earlier Christian missionaries, Roman Catholic and Prot- 
estant, sought to make converts from among the Brahmins and 
higher caste Hindus, and most of the outstanding figures in 
Indian Christianity were among the converts made by them. 
This door, however, was closed owing to the activities of re- 
ligious and social reform movements within Hinduism. ‘The 
Brahmo Samaj was the first of these movements; its founder, 
Raja Ram Mohun Roy, had a deep veneration for Jesus Christ. 
But he was opposed to proselytism, holding that the funda- 
mental principles of all religions were identical; that the Hindu 
scriptures, rightly interpreted, taught a pure monotheism ; and 


256 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


that while Jesus Christ, as one of the world’s greatest teachers, 
must command the reverence of all men, it was quite possible 
and most desirable that anyone should follow Christ’s teach- 
ings without cutting himself off from his own social environ- 
ment and traditional culture. 

The Arya Samaj movement, which came later, rejected the 
broad electicism of Raja Ram Mohun Roy and based itself ex- 
clusively upon the oldest Hindu scripture—the Vedas. But 
both the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj equally stood for 
social reforms: such as the abolition of caste; the redemption 
of the lowest classes whose mere contact is supposed to defile 
a person of the higher castes; the education and the elevation of 
the status of women; and the reform of marriage customs. 
These two religious reform movements had a great effect in 
checking conversions to other religions. The late Swami 
Vivekananda once remarked that but for these two movements 
a large section of Hindus would have been converted to Mo- 
hammedanism or Christianity. The swami himself was the 
originator of a movement for the revival of Hinduism based on 
the philosophic system of the Vedanta (a school teaching the 
ultimate aim of the Veda). Another movement worthy of note 
is that represented by the Theosophical Society. All these 
movements included social service as an essential part of their 
religious propaganda. This feature of their activities was di- 
rectly borrowed from Christian missions and was, in fact, a 
chief means relied upon to counteract their proselytizing propa- 
ganda. 

Owing to these and other causes conversions from among the 
higher Hindu castes have practically ceased. The bulk of the 
converts nowadays come from the lower castes. The direct 
value of these conversions from the lower castes, in setting 
before India the highest type of Christianity has, however, not 
been great. The British census superintendent, writing about 
the Bombay Christian Kolis, remarks: “It is well known that 
these Christian Kolis combine the worship of idols with the 
worship of the Christian Trinity, figures of Hindu godlings 
being kept behind the altar and covered with a cloth when a 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 25g 


priest comes to celebrate Mass.” The Roman Catholic Arch- 
bishop of Bombay, the Most Reverend Alban Goodier, says: 
“Though we call them Christians, one has to give a very broad 
definition in order to include them.” Dr. James Bissett Pratt 
in his book “India and Its Faiths”, which is the most accurate 
and impartial work by a foreign observer on the subject that I 
know of, observes: 

“Much the greater proportion of conversions are made 
from the low castes and the Animists; and figures based so 
largely on success with this inferior part of the population give 
us absolutely no sort of basis for any sort of prediction as to 
success among that great mass of higher caste Hindus, Bud- 
dhists, and Mohammedans who are as yet almost untouched by 
Christianity as far as census figures are concerned. Hence I 
fear that the census returns will hardly answer our questions; 
and though it is natural and right that the missionary should 
scan them with interest, he should not be unduly elated at re- 
ported gains nor too much cast down at reported losses. Let 
him remember the words of Emerson, ‘Whenever an appeal to 
numbers is made, religion is dead.’”? The census superintend- 
ent of the Punjab, also an Englishman, writes: ‘The appeal 
of Christianity (in so far as it succeeds in obtaining converts) 
is to the person who can hope for nothing from his own com- 
munity and sees in the Christian community a means of better- 
ing his status and the character of his life, while the material 
benefits offered by the missions in the shape of education, med- 
ical relief, and general interest in the welfare of their folk are 
by no means small incentives.” 

From the purely humanitarian point of view the Christian 
missions have rendered and are rendering an important service 
to the advancement of India by undertaking the redemption of 
these classes which, until a few years ago, were totally neg- 
lected by Hindu reformers. The awakening of the Hindu 
leaders to their duty to the depressed classes is itself a very 
important, though incidental result of the philanthropic work 
of Christian missions. Today the “removal of untouchability” 
is the first plank in the programme of constructive work which 


258 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Mahatma Gandhi has placed before India as the surest means 
of national salvation. The enfranchising of these classes, under 
the reform scheme of the political constitution recently intro- 
duced in India, is powerfully contributing to secure sympathy 
for measures for ameliorating their deplorable social and 
economic condition. 

These conversions among the masses, however, have had the 
effect of antagonizing Christian missions to the movement of 
Indian nationalism. Sir Valentine Chirol, the English publi- 
cist, concludes the chapter on the depressed classes in his book 
“Indian Unrest” with the significant remark: “From the po- 
litical point of view the conversion of so many millions of the 
population of India to the faith of their rulers would open up 
prospects of such moment that I need not expatiate on them.” 
Several eminent Christian missionaries in India promptly and 
publicly protested against the suggestion implied in Sir Val- 
entine Chirol’s remark when the book was first published fifteen 
years ago. But the fear that the conversion of the depressed 
classes to Christianity may be detrimental to the interests of 
nationalism has undoubtedly been a stimulus to work among 
these classes by non-Christian agencies. 

The danger of a divergence between the courses of Indian 
Christianity and Indian nationalism, which was a real danger 
at one stage, has been diverted by the wise and far-seeing policy 
of Indian Christian leaders, supported by the wisest and most 
experienced European and American missionaries in India. By 
rejecting the proposal to create separate communal electorates 
for the Indian and Provincial legislative councils, such as those 
accorded to Mohammedans, the National Conference of Indian 
Christians showed its capacity to sacrifice immediate benefits 
of a seemingly substantial character to the higher demands of 
a united Indian nationalism. This decision has had a remark- 
able effect on the non-Christian attitude towards Christianity. 
In the Unity Conference held at Delhi, following upon 
Mahatma Gandhi’s memorable twenty-one days’ fast, Indian 
Christian leaders headed by the Bishop Metropolitan of the 
official Anglican Church in India took a leading part in the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION aa 


deliberations to promote harmonious relations among the sev- 
eral sects and creeds in India. 

Indians recognize quite clearly the distinction between Chris- 
tianity or, to be more accurate, the teachings of Jesus Christ, 
and modern Western civilization. A strong movement has 
arisen, in the body of the Indian Christian community itself, 
to link up Christianity with the immemorial religious culture 
of India by presenting it in terms and forms which shall be 
familiar to the Indian mind and shall harmonize with the In- 
dian environment. 

More than one Christian has inquired of me in recent years 
whether the World War had materially influenced the Indians’ 
estimation of the Christian religion. It has undoubtedly done 
much to lower the credit of organized Christianity, but at the 
same time it has brought into prominent relief the figure of 
Jesus Christ himself. At no time previously have Hindu lead- 
ers drawn so largely from Christ’s teachings in support of their 
nationalist propaganda. 

The situation in Indian today presents the curious paradox 
that, though the chances of Indians being converted to Chris- 
tianity were never more remote, the study of the teachings of 
Jesus as holding the key to the solution of the problems pressing 
most upon the world was never more earnestly pursued than 
now by India’s leaders and thinkers. 





































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BOOK VI 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCHES 


After an examination of the relations of Christianity to the 
various civil communities, we reach finally the relation of Chris- 
tianity to the one specifically Christian community, the Church. 
What is the Church? What functions in its service can be 
exercised by women? What do non-Churchmen think of the 
Church? How do Churchmen regard such criticism? And— 
most debated question of all today—how can the Church attain 
to visible unity? 


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CHAPTER XXIII 


NATURE AND FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH 


A distinguished scholar and preacher who stands somewhat apart from tra- 

ditional lines here sets out the prevailing conceptions of the Church that are 

held by various religious thinkers, and then proposes a plan for their reconcilia- 

tion. His plan is that of organic unity; other plans are discussed in a later 
chapter. 

T is a most remarkable thing that while churchmen lay so 
much emphasis upon the priority, the supremacy, and the 
necessity of the Church, even among themselves there 

should be such a complete absence of agreement as to the nature 
and function of the Church. There is indeed agreement that 
the Church is a Body of Christ, but this is only a description 
and not a definition. For although this name describes it as 
a body which may have many members with varying functions, 
there is no manner of agreement as to who are members of 
the body; that is to say, there is no agreed definition of the 
Church which would enable anyone to decide where the center 
and circumference of the Church are to be found, and in the 
case of dispute or pretension how the true Church is to be 
distinguished. 

This confusion as to the nature of the Church is possibly due 
to the desire of many individuals and organizations who, while 
anxious to repudiate certain conceptions of the Church, and 
feeling it essential to truth or holiness to separate themselves 
from superstitions and corruptions which have overtaken 
ancient branches of the Church, are none the less anxious to 
be reckoned as members of the Body of Christ. The desire to 
retain some connection with the Church of Christ may some- 
times seem only a persistent superstition or indicate a merely 


selfish concern for individual salvation. But it is in reality an 
263 


264 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


instinct which goes down to a profound social consciousness 
and is of the utmost importance to the redemption of our race. 

If there is confusion as to the very nature of the Church, 
even among those who claim to belong to it, this can be matched 
by the confusion concerning the function of the Church which 
is sometimes betrayed by those who criticize it from without. 
It is no uncommon thing to meet with a type of criticism di- 
rected against the Church which combines a complete denial 
of its supernatural character with a caustic condemnation of 
the Church for not presenting an appearance, or failing 
to initiate some action, which could be expected only of an 
entirely supernatural body. One should remember that while 
the Church does make supernatural claims concerning its 
foundation, its power, its purpose, and its persistence, it is ad- 
mitted that all these are ministered in and through natural and 
human means, so that in this admixture the divine element 
suffers a certain hindrance and must continue to do so until the 
perfection of the Church has been completed. 

Nevertheless, if at any time the human element so hindered, 
obscured, or corrupted the divine element that it altogether 
disappeared or became completely inoperative, then the super- 
natural claims of the Church would certainly have to be sur- 
rendered. Sometimes when churchmen defend the Church 
they seem to forget that it is a body concerning which super- 
natural claims are made, while critics from without sometimes 
forget that the Church must have its human side. But if the 
total history of the Church is taken into account; its persistence 
under persecution; its constant reformation and recovery; its 
subsisting unity underlying all schism and separation; its glori- 
ous succession of martyrs, saints, prophets, philanthropists, and 
benefactors of humanity—then few could fairly deny the 
evidence of its supernatural character. 

If all mankind must be considered as cApabid of being in- 
cluded in the Church of God, humanity can then be regarded as 
the potential Body of Christ. We need only regard the actual 
Church as that portion of mankind which has become conscious 
of God’s purpose towards humanity and is already endeavoring 


en 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 265 


to bring itself into line with the divine will, its purpose purely 
preparatory, and its existence only instrumental for gathering 
all men into the fold of Christ. 

Here, then, we have in the Church an idea that will be ad- 
mitted, at least by all religiously-minded persons, to be a con- 
ception of the highest possible inspiration and an institution of 
the greatest possible promise for the redemption of society and 
the welfare of the world. 


I 


Let us survey the delimitations of the Church, that is, by 
defining who actually belong to it. And it would be wise to 
start from the most rigid and exclusive of definitions, namely 
that held by the Roman communion. This is authoritatively laid 
down in a frequently quoted definition of Cardinal Robert 
Bellarmine in his work on the Church entitled ““De Ecclesia”: 
“A body of men united together by the profession of the same 
Christian faith, and by participation in the same sacraments, 
under the governance of lawful pastors, more especially of the 
Roman Pontiff, the sole Vicar of Christ on earth”. If this 
definition is taken in its strictest sense it means that the Church 
of Christ consists solely of those in communion with the See of 
Rome, and that all persons outside it are not members of the 
Church at all, so that their communions or denominations have 
no right to be called churches. There can be only one Church, 
for the term precludes, in its strict sense, any real plurality; and 
the Roman Catholic Church identifies its own! communion, 
rigidly united both in faith and organization, as the one true 
Church. 

But it is interesting to note that this identification has prob- 
ably never been a matter of such dogmatic definition as would 
come under the heading of what Roman Catholics consider an 
infallible decree, that it is capable of more than one explana- 
tion, and that even in the definition quoted above, the qualifica- 
tion “more especially” is brought in somewhat ‘curiously and 
introduces an element of ambiguity. 


266 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


There are Christian churches which lay claim to the term 
“Catholic” in its traditional sense but do not acknowledge the 
papal supremacy, and are therefore out of communion with 
the Roman See. Chief among these is the Greek Orthodox 
Church, which claims to be the true Church of Christ as 
definitely and as exclusively as does the Roman Catholic com- 
munion and believes that councils are the final source of au- 
thority. ‘These are of course primarily the great councils of the 
earlier Christian centuries, but Greek theologians by no means 
limit the number of conciliar assemblages to these; they in- 
clude many more recent councils and hold that new councils 
may be called again at any time. Thus the Greek Church, like 
the Latin, is able to appeal to a living source of authority. But 
its doctrine of strict exclusiveness is tempered by what is called 
the theory of economy, by which it may, without imposing 
any new conditions, recognize any Christian body as part of 
the one Church. 

In the Anglican communion the large number of theologians 
who hold that the Anglican Church is Catholic generally teach 
a very different theory. They agree that the Church consists 
of those bodies which have preserved the Catholic faith and the 
apostolic succession; and for their definition of the Catholic 
faith they would go back to the decrees of those councils held 
while the Eastern and Western churches were still undivided, 
or on other matters take as a standard those doctrines and prac- 
tices on which East and West are still agreed. This theory 
is sometimes called the “branch” theory of the Church; but 
save for convenience the use of this word is no longer pressed, 
for it is recognized to be an illegitimate application of Christ’s 
illustration of the branches of the vine, which obviously refer 
to individuals and not to collective bodies. Beyond this defi- 
nition a still wider one is demanded by the churches which 
broke away from some of the early councils, such as the ancient 
Nestorian, Armenian, and Coptic communions, but more 
especially by those churches which broke away from the West- 
ern Church at the Reformation and formed themselves on a 
basis of faith and order not only distinct from, but sometimes 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 267 


opposed to, the Roman Church, believing that they had revived 
the original constitution of the Church described in the New 
Testament. At one time or another some of these bodies were 
prepared to‘ declare that they alone constituted the true 
Church because they alone reproduced the New Testa- 
ment system of government: as, for instance, once in the case 
of the Presbyterians, or still in the case of the Plymouth Breth- 
ren. But most of them would now simply claim to be denomi- 
nations within the one Church; only a few of them would now 
deny that the Roman Church or any other churches claiming 
to be Catholic are within the Church, though they would 
regard them as corrupt members of it. ‘This is the widest 
definition so far reached, and it would include the members 
of all bodies which style themselves churches of Christ. 

Here, however, difficulties of delimitations begin to emerge, 
for it would be disputed by many whether, for example, Uni- 
tarians could be included in the Church because of their 
doctrinal position in regard to Christ; or such bodies, for in- 
stance, as the Salvation Army or the Society of Friends because 
of their absence of sacraments; and still more whether the 
large and influential body known as the Church of Christ, 
Scientist, could be included. This definition by bodies there- 
fore leads to little agreement and is obviously involved in 
difficulties when it has to be considered where the line is to 
be drawn. There is, moreover, less disposition at present to 
identify the different denominations with those members of 
the Body of Christ which have differing functions according to 
their position in the body; for everyone would now admit that 
this variation is in the New Testament descriptive of indi- 
viduals and not of corporate denominations. 

It would seem to be a welcome escape from these difficulties 
to accept the idea that the Church of Christ is an invisible 
body and consists of those persons inside all the denominations, 
and in many cases also no doubt outside, and having no Church 
affiliation whatever, and perhaps not even baptized—who are 
united to Christ by a living faith and spiritual communion. 
Of course who these are no one can decide, perhaps not even 


268 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the persons themselves; they must be known to God alone. 
But here arises the difficulty that such a definition seems to 
dispense with a visible and organized Church, such as we cer- 
tainly find in the New Testament; or at least the relation of the 
organized denominations to this invisible body is difficult to 
understand or define. Some Protestant thinkers would maintain 
that the actual denominations are simply external expedients, 
due to the necessities of human society and the need for earthly 
organization while the actual Church of Jesus Christ itself 
continues invisible; they are the mere earthly vessels which con- 
tain the heavenly treasure. But such a view is bound to be in the 
end destructive of such organizations and is only likely still 
further to lower their spiritual ideals; for on this theory they 
must find it difficult to take themselves seriously as churches. 


II 


If we now turn back to the definition held by the Roman 
Catholic Church we may find that it is capable of a wider in- 
terpretation. Not only is there that phrase “more especially” 
in Cardinal Bellarmine’s definition, which seems to leave 
room for other persons less closely attached to a coherent and 
consistent core; but Roman doctrine also allows that there is a 
mystical Church of Christ to which only those who shall finally 
be saved belong. This is by no means taken to include all 
members of the Roman Catholic Church; for although the idea 
is common among Protestants—and might even be found among 
a good many Catholics—that to belong to the Roman Catholic 
Church guarantees one’s salvation, no such doctrine is au- 
thoritatively taught or is safely deducible. Indeed just be- 
cause one who is a member of that Church is so near to what is 
believed to be the very heart of spiritual life, and just because 
he has had the benefits of the sacraments, his responsibility is in- 
creased, while if he is unfaithful his condemnation is all the 
more certain. So that, as a matter of fact, there is really more 
hope in the Last Judgment for a good person outside the Church 
than for a bad person inside, for a good pagan than for a bad 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 269 


Catholic. Moreover it is positively asserted that there are many 
outside the Roman Catholic Church who belong to the “soul” of 
the Church, because they are actually in vital contact with 
Christ, though in ignorance of the true Church’s claims; and al- 
though they may have no access to the sacraments and perhaps 
even no belief in them, for them there are nevertheless available 
the baptism of desire, spiritual Communion, and that absolution 
which follows from perfect contrition. Further, it is Roman 
doctrine that the visible Church only exists for the sake of that 
invisible Church of which the visible Church is, as it were, 
the sacrament. It is held, however, that when those who may 
belong to the soul of the Church become aware of the claims 
of the visible Church, they are bound to unite themselves to it. 

This, in theory, all would admit who understand the nature 
of the Church, for we must live in the hope that one day all 
who belong to the soul of the Church shall be gathered into 
the body; though we can hardly hope that until the Last 
Judgment will all those who belong merely to the body and 
not to the soul of the Church—that is, unfaithful Catholics, 
—have their false positions revealed. Although one might 
hold that the Church ought not to be in any way disunited and 
that to the Roman Catholic Church there should be allowed 
(because of its historic descent, its presentation of an extraor- 
dinary unity, its wide-world extension, and its conception of a 
universal mission which it can delegate to no other bodies what- 
soever) a pre-eminent claim to be the Catholic Church, yet 
there must be some sense in which other bodies have the right 
to be called churches. For wherever two or three are gath- 
ered together in Christ’s name, there is Christ, and ‘wherever 
Christ is there is the Catholic Church”. The presence of the 
Catholic Church may in that case be invisible; yet wherever 
such persons meet they constitute the Church, and the very 
bodies to which they belong must partake in some degree of a 
churchly character. To be sure, many Roman authorities, 
while standing fast by their claim that the Roman Catholic 
Church is the one true Church, would interpret this to mean 
the one Church which has kept the true faith, Maintaining 


270 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


also that apostolic succession, perfect orthodoxy, and un- 
broken unity were essential to the perfect Church, they would 
still be willing to concede that there were valid sacraments 
outside their communion, and that Christ’s presence was 
granted and his grace given to other groups or communities. 
Not only does this give us some vision of a comprehensive con- 
ception of the Church, but if this doctrine were more generally 
known it would surely bring nearer the true reformation of 
the Catholic Church and the reunion of Christendom. What 
Rome claims for itself will be true for the reunited Church— 
and may therefore be regarded as a claim held in trust for 
the future. 


III 


Waiving any attempt to suggest how the Church may per- 
haps one day become united, the difficulties which stand in the 
way nevertheless have to be considered, because they correctly 
embody the differing interpretations of the organic nature of 
the Church. The Catholic churches claim that the Church 
depends upon the maintenance of the apostolic succession 
through its episcopal order; the Roman Catholic Church add- 
ing that even this is not sufficient unless the episcopal order is 
united, which, it holds, can only be secured by the recognition 
of the priority and supremacy of the succession from St. Petér 
preserved by the Papacy. Other churches deny the necessity 
of the episcopal order, which they believe to have been a later 
development. Notably the Presbyterian churches claim a suc- 
cession through presbyters, or at least that presbyters also pos- 
sess episcopal, that is ordaining powers. In this the Methodist 
churches in principle agree, believing ordinary ministers have 
the right to ordain to the ministry, though regarding ordina- 
tion as the function of an office rather than of an order. The 
Congregational and similar bodies do not believe that the suc- 
cession is carried on through the ministry, but rather through 
the membership of the whole Church: they lay great stress 
upon the “priesthood of all believers”, and their conception 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 271 


of the ministry is that certain persons—especially qualified by 
Christian character and gifts—are ordained by the congrega- 
tion, acting under the direction of the Holy Spirit, to exercise 
that priesthood. Other bodies, notably the Quakers, while 
recognizing the ministry of those persons whose exhortations 
have come to be acceptable to the meeting, are careful to 
repudiate any distinction from the rest of the Church by de- 
manding that such ministers shall earn their living by other 
means than their ministry. 

It is not, however, in the method of appointment to the 
ministry that the gravest difficulty arises, but in the sacerdotal 
functions of the ministry as conceived by the Catholic churches, 
against which other churches continue in protest. For this 
not only marks a distinction between Catholic and Protestant 
conceptions of the ministry, but it colors the whole conception 
of the Church. In addition it makes a common point for the 
repudiation of the Church by the world, because of the gen- 
eral fear of the power that a sacerdotal priesthood is believed 
to exercise. The formal connotation of the word “priestcraft” 
is in iself no more objectionable than “mothercraft”, though 
it has come to have a sinister sound, and the significance of the 
opposition of Continental secularists being known as “anti- 
clericalism” sufficiently indicates the situation created by sacer- 
dotalism. It cannot be denied that the powers of the priesthood 
have frequently been abused in the attempt to exert political 
power, or by exercising a coercive sway over the consciences 
of men; while there is a lamentable tendency among some 
Catholics to regard the Church as almost identical with the 
clerical order, the laity being regarded as almost without any 
other responsibility than that of obedience and financial sup- 
port. 

Yet all great and good things are liable to abuse, and there is 
no real relief to be found in the lowering of the priestly ideal 
of the ministry or ‘in regarding it as a purely prophetic office. 
The prophet can be as dangerous as the priest, and many who 
have claimed prophetic power, or have exercised great influ- 
ence through their gift of persuasive oratory and leadership, 


272 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


have gained an ascendancy over the minds of the susceptible, 
and have chained multitudes in error, in a way that would 
be almost impossible for a priest, whose functions are more 
clearly defined and who is himself under authority. More- 
over it ought to be noted by the person who is outside all the 
churches, and who may dislike all parsons, and fear the general 
influence which any religious caste may exert, that we should not 
get rid of the abuse of authority or the wrong use of personal 
power by abolishing priesthoods, clerical corporations, and all 
forms of religious professionalism. Enormous power is exer- 
cised by parents, pedagogues, politicians, scientific experts, and 
medical men, and is as constantly open to abuse. Indeed it 
may fairly be said that when men obtain emancipation from the 
priest they often find they only have to give more power to the 
police. The cure, reform, and prevention of such abuses is to 
be sought rather in the restrictions which a purer and more 
widespread religion and a more spiritual conception of priest- 
hood will bring. 

There has always been some kind of a Church, and there 
always will be: even the founder of Positivism, Augustus Comte, 
realized that. There have always been priests under one name 
or another, and there always will be: for religion must have 
its representative and responsible leaders. The thing to do is 
to secure that they shall minister to genuine religion and exer- 
cise a truly Christian authority. Perhaps we can even discern 
the possibility of a reconciling and comprehensive conception 
on the basis of the priesthood of all believers, which can in no 
way be denied, for it is a New Testament doctrine. But the 
doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, the trusted bulwark 
against sacerdotalism, has often, in effect, come to mean not that 
all Christians are priests, but that there is no priesthood what- 
ever in Christianity. It may perhaps be pointed out that there 
is an initial confusion inherent in the very connotation of the 
word “priest”. It is really only the shortened form of the word 
“presbyter”, an early name for a Church official. ‘The priest- 
hood claimed for all Christians in the New Testament is that 
of a hieratic or, as the Latin cognate has it, a sacerdotal order. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION ons 


But this is claimed for the body as a whole rather than for 
individual members. The Church is a priestly body: it is the 
priesthood of humanity, that portion of humanity consciously 
related to God, though exercising that relationship not for itself 
only but on behalf of all mankind. The presbyter is the repre- 
sentative and official priest. Without his order—to exercise such 
priestly duties as must necessarily be delegated to a particular 
person, and to set forth in an exemplary fashion the priestly 
character of the whole body—it has been found in practice very 
difficult to maintain the true hieratic and sacerdotal character 
of the Church. Thus a hierarchy seems to be an essential ele- 
ment if the Church is to be rightly ruled; only such hierarchical 
government should not follow the pattern of worldly authority, 
but should be the sanctification of the lowliest service. 

It is surely possible to approve a representative priest- 
hood, chosen for recognized ability and trained and set apart 
for special purposes, for instance, the leading of worship, the 
celebration of the sacraments, and the official declaration of the 
forgiveness of sins. From this natural demand for representa- 
tion it seems possible to rise to the idea of the succession of the 
Church from the original apostolic foundation. For it is quite 
obvious that in order to belong to a visible society we must be 
admitted by the society itself, and in the case of a widespread 
society by its representative officers. This demand takes us 
back inevitably, step by step, to that original society which con- 
sisted of the Apostles on whom the Holy Spirit came at Pente- 
cost, and who in turn admitted others to their fellowship. And 
only that society through multiplying and spreading all down 
the ages, yet organically linked up to the original society, can 
really admit others to itself. There must, therefore, be some 
form of apostolic succession. 


IV 


Another great difference and difficulty emerges in the place 
given to sacraments. In the Eastern, the Roman, and the 
Anglican churches these occupy a foremost place, and are 


274 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


regarded as the necessary means of admitting persons to the 
membership of the Church, and of confirming, replenishing, 
and restoring their position; whereas, in a descending degree, 
through the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist 
churches, until we reach bodies such as the Quakers and the 
Salvation Army, sacraments have less and less importance 
attached to them, and finally vanish altogether. But it should 
be remembered that, even in the strict Catholic doctrine, 
sacraments are only generally necessary, that is, necessary to the 
Church as a whole, and individuals can or may exist without 
any of them and yet be in true union with the head of the 
Church. It is only the making of the sacraments the 
exclusive means of grace, on the one side, and their repudiation 
as a means of grace at all, on the other, which creates a fictitious 
opposition; for neither position is really tenable or perhaps 
authoritatively held. For the true Catholic doctrine does not 
make sacraments the exclusive means of grace.,., It},is-. ae- 
knowledged that there is not only a baptism of water and by the 
blood of martyrdom, but a baptism of desire. There is also 
such a thing as spiritual Communion, so little falling short of 
Communion by means of the consecrated species that it should 
be contentedly accepted, rather than break the rules to be ob- 
served to secure a consecration recognizably valid for the whole 
Church. And then there is the absolution available to perfect 
contrition. Of course some believers would make these al- 
lowances only for special cases and temporary conditions, and 
not exalt them into supremacy or make them the universal rule. 

In the other direction there is perhaps a movement already 
discernible which recognizes a means of grace in sacraments. 
Many Quakers would no longer regard them as corruptions, 
but only not as necessities for everyone; while their own rite 
of silence has about it something almost of the nature of a 
sacrament. And it is instructive to note that in a body like the 
Salvation Army, where all ministerial orders and all sacraments 
are entirely dispensed with, we return through the adoption of 
military rank and discipline to a system more autocratic than 
the Papacy itself, and to the use of such things as flags and 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 275 


uniforms, which in a way readmits the very principle that 
underlies sacraments and vestments. 

What is recognized as “the sacramental principle” is now 
admitted in many quarters to be not only a valid principle in 
the ordering of common worship and the conveying of spiritual 
power, but as providing the basis for the profoundest and per- 
haps most reconciling of all philosophical theories, namely, the 
principle that spiritual realities are conveyable through ma- 
terial agencies. It is true many would be more prepared to 
admit the general validity of the sacramental principle than 
the special efficiency of particular sacraments. But perhaps it 
will suffice to point out that the general principle would never 
have been grasped apart from the meaning given to the Sacra- 
ment, and also that special sacraments are for special purposes 
and are set apart and consecrated to that end. If the sacra- 
mental principle is valid and if prayer has any power, then the 
validity and efficiency of special sacraments seem logically to 
follow. 

For the reaching of a real reconciliation there appears only 
to be needed a more widespread understanding of the Catholic 
doctrine of the sacraments, which by strict definition involves 
neither magic nor a material miracle. Although the sacra- 
ments are held to set forth an objective sacrifice and convey real 
grace, it is held, not that the sacrifice is an addition to or a rep- 
etition of the supreme sacrifice of Calvary, but that it is the 
self-same sacrifice mystically represented; moreover the grace 
bestowed is held to depend for its efficacy on the recipient’s 
sincere intention not to hinder but to co-operate with it. 


Vv 


A further difference in the conception of the nature of the 
Church comes out in the relative position given to the Bible: 
for this must determine the character of the Church as a teach- 
ing authority. We find here two contrasting popular ideas. 
One is that the Bible and the Bible only is the religion of the 
Protestants; the other is that the Roman Catholic Church is 


276 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


opposed to the “open Bible”, forbids it to be read, and places 
ecclesiastical tradition on an equal footing with Scripture. 

The acute character of this extreme opposition is traceable 
to a conflict which lies far back in the confused and complicated 
period of the Reformation, when the authorities of the Roman 
Catholic Church condemned vernacular versions of the Bible 
to be burned—a proceeding that has left almost as deep a mark 
upon the popular memory as the burning of martyrs or the in- 
iquities of the Inquisition. And the popular impression is, that 
the Roman Catholic Church forbids the reading of the Bible by 
the laity because it perfectly well knows that a knowledge of 
Scripture would dispose of many of its claims. But there needs 
considerable adjustment in this prevailing impression. What- 
ever reluctance there may have been on the part of the ecclesi- 
astical authorities at the time of the Reformation to place the 
Bible in the hands of the common people,—and this reluctance 
seems in some regards to have been exaggerated by Protestant 
controversialists,—it was soon overcome within the Roman 
Catholic Church itself. Versions in the vernacular were pro- 
vided officially, and their free reading was commended and 
even urged. 

What the Roman Catholic Church really objects to is the 
idea that the Scriptures can be placed in the hands of anyone, 
and that, without any other guide or explanation, they are suf- 
ficient to bring a man knowledge of salvation and to guide him 
into all truth. We have sufficient evidence before us today that 
the Scriptures taken alone have given rise to wide differences 
of opinion which have deluged Protestantism with a multi- 
plicity of sects. And often those very sects which have founded 
themselves so emphatically upon the Scriptures have deduced 
from them the most crude beliefs and fantastic conclusions. 

The rise of modern scholarship has convinced Protestantism 
that the Bible is in great need of interpretation. Yet although 
the modern scientific and historical attitude towards the Scrip- 
tures has also let loose a radical criticism which has sometimes 
proved not only disturbing but destructive, the general ten- 
dency has been towards a recovery of the main drift and most 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 277 


important teaching of the Old Testament. This scholarship 
has, too, upon the whole led to the establishment of the early 
dates and authenticity of most of the New Testament documents, 
The modern Protestant regards the individual conscience as 
illuminated by the same Spirit that inspired the Bible, recog- 
nizing the agreement between these elements—written Word, 
Christianized conscience, and the Holy Spirit. This, of course, 
introduces a subjective element; but it must not be and will not 
be either rationalistic or revolutionary if only reverence for the 
word that spake in the past, and dependence upon the Spirit 
still leading into all truth, be equally borne in mind. Much 
of the freest of Protestant criticism now holds that there is a 
high place given both to Church and sacraments in the New 
Testament. 

Many liberal scholars would now admit that the Catholic 
conception of both Church and sacraments is to be found in 
the pages of the New Testament, and if radical writers are 
still unwilling to trace these conceptions to the teaching of 
Jesus and his intention in celebrating the Last Supper with his 
disciples, they do trace them to Paul himself, who had hitherto 
been considered rather the representative of the non-ecclesias- 
tical and non-sacramental interpretation of Christianity. More- 
over the extreme Protestant position, that the Bible can stand 
alone without any church tradition whatsoever, involves itself 
in the difficulty that the Canon of the New Testament was fixed 
finally by ecclesiastical authority, and that what determined its 
fixing was the existence of a general tradition as to authorship 
and the reception given to the various documents by the great 
sees of the Church. Besides, while Catholics may appeal in 
support of certain doctrines or practices to the teaching of the 
early Fathers or to primitive tradition, they equally appeal to 
the sanctions which can be found in the Scriptures. And within 
such limits a general acceptance must be allowed to the Church 
as not only the custodian but as the interpreter of Scripture. An 
appeal to the Bible alone begs the question, and the methods of 
the most radical criticism have an equally illogical basis; after 
all, they have to appeal to the authority of one Scripture to 


278 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


confute another. It is true that on many matters which modern 
criticism has raised the Roman Catholic Church takes an un- 
necessarily conservative position, to which it is pledged by a 
doctrine that seems to involve something approximating to the 
doctrine of verbal inspiration. But the Roman Catholic Church 
is equally committed to the acceptance of all proved scientific, 
historical, and literary facts. 

We may thus look forward to a time when extreme radical 
criticism will be discredited by the arbitrariness of its method 
and the contradictory character of its results, and the ultra- 
conservatism of the Roman Catholic attitude towards the Scrip- 
tures will have been modified by further consideration. Not 
only so, but the necessity for a living, inspired voice both to 
interpret God’s Word in the past and to proclaim the pro- 
gressive realization of truth becomes more and more evident. 
The Catholic insistence that nothing can be taught contrary to 
Scripture, interpreted as a progressive revelation, is an obvi- 
ously necessary recognition of the continuity of truth. When 
disputes emerge which threaten to break the peace of Christen- 
dom, or when doctrines are promulgated that would undermine 
the fundamental facts of revelation and make the Church’s 
worship and the individual experience of many thousands of 
saints a delusion, the right to decide where the truth lies is in- 
herent in the corporate character of the Church. This right 
must be exercised if the Church is to continue to be the guide 
and instructor of mankind—the power to do which has been def- 
initely promised under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is 
hence seen that the Church and Scripture are complementary 
authorities, and that it is through the fruitful and harmonious 
interaction of the two that the Spirit will guide us unto all truth. 


vi 


The oppositions into which differing bodies of the Church 
have been driven are due to the misunderstanding and the press- 
ing of things which have no real Catholic basis at all, resulting 
rather from human abuses and popular exaggerations; while 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 279 


the necessity for the Catholic conception has been obscured or 
not thoroughly explained, and is thus naturally fled from in 
fear and repudiated in ignorance. But deep down under these 
differences there lies a discernible unity and a promise that, 
when mutual prejudices and obscurations have cleared away, 
unity will gradually take a more tangible form. We have every 
reason to hope that the visible Church will more and more be 
seen to be the sacrament of the invisible, and by a gradual proc- 
ess of purification will eventually become identical with it—as 
closely knit together as, in the doctrine of the Sacrament, the 
invisible substance of the Body of Christ is bound up with the 
visible species. ‘This enables us to hold that the exclusive 
claims of the Roman Catholic Church, which at present the 
other churches cannot allow, are being maintained by a divine 
Providence in trust for the future. So that when the churches 
are united—as one day they must be if Christ’s prayer is ever to 
be answered—statements now made of one body will be found 
true of the whole Church. We may hope that a more spiritual 
interpretation of Roman Catholic doctrines, actually demanded 
on both sides, will enable them to be accepted by sincere Christ- 
loving Protestants. We can even believe that the temporary 
disruption into which the Church has been allowed to fall was 
permitted by God in order that a richer and purer unity might 
come out of it; and we can already begin, however dimly, to 
discern that there is a reconciling conception capable of embrac- 
ing everything, without really denying anything, that the 
churches shall finally wish to affirm. 

There are those who insist that the whole church idea is a 
corruption of Christianity and that Christ never founded the 
Church at all. Taking the words in their strict and literal 
sense, it may be admitted that Christ never founded the Church; 
he only promised to build it. The great pledge to Peter, “on 
this rock will I build my Church”, looks to the future. To 
people who regard the Church as the enemy of Christianity 
may be commended consideration of Christianity’s ultimate 
concern, which is to make one body as there is one Spirit. 
Christianity without a Church would declare itself to have 


280 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


failed in its primary task. Therefore the poorest and most cor- 
rupt Church contains more hope than the modern preference 
for a churchless Christianity. 

No one who really loves his fellows or professes humani- 
tarian ideals can, after the sufficient consideration of what is 
involved, regard the Church as superfluous or irrelevant to the 
progress and destiny of humanity. Anything which diminishes 
the ideal of the Church may be regarded as an enemy of human 
hope. Those who are non-religious, and yet would claim to 
be humanitarians and idealists, would dispute this; and some 
who are unquestionably religious, but who are strong individ- 
ualists and opposed to any organization in connection with 
spiritual realities, might maintain that they were Christians 
although remaining hostile to the Church. But the one section 
might at least be willing to reflect whether humanitarian hopes 
really have a sufficient basis in reason alone, or whether humani- 
tarian hopes are likely to be realized unless we can redeem not 
only individuals but human institutions and organizations. And 
to the other section might perhaps be recommended a more 
careful study of the New Testament, a closer realization of the 
necessities of human nature, and a greater faith in God’s power 
to redeem society. 


VII 


If there has been vagueness in men’s minds concerning the 
nature of the Church, and if there has been disagreement 
among those claiming to belong to the Church as to who 
actually have that right, it is not surprising that there should 
have been equal misunderstanding concerning the function of 
the Church. And this is to be found not only outside the 
Church and by those who criticize it and hence remain outside, 
but inside the Church and by those who would guide its actions, 
with a resultant confusion of purpose and distraction of aim. 

One of the oldest and clearest conceptions of the functions of 
the Church is that it is the ark of salvation, meaning the only 
place of safety in a world being overwhelmed in ruin. This 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 281 


conception is emphasized in the ancient maxim, extra ecclestam 
nulla salus (“outside the Church no salvation”). So viewed, the 
function of the Church would plainly seem to be to snatch 
men from the destruction otherwise awaiting them, and at all 
costs to bring them within the shelter of the Church’s arms. 
The Church exists to save men, and those within the Church are 
the saved. But this conception depends too much on a mere 
illustration to be taken as theologically sufficient, and it needs 
to be corrected by a wider interpretation. For not all within 
the Church are necessarily saved, and certainly not all outside 
it are to be conceived as necessarily lost. It therefore seems 
requisite to balance’ this with another conception, in which 
the Church is regarded as the Church of the elect. 

This does not simply mean the same thing over again, because 
election is no longer to be conceived as conveying an exclusive 
and guaranteed salvation, but rather, as the New Testament 
most often seems to indicate, as election for special service. In 
that case the Church will be regarded as a company of the 
servants of God, called and chosen by Him specially to carry 
out-His work; the priests of humanity, setting forth the wor- 
ship of God; the real kings of mankind and soldiers of Christ, 
who are defending humanity against its greatest foes of sin, un- 
belief, and despair. With the former conception of the Church 
as the ark of salvation, there is bound to be an endeavor to 
gather in as many as possible in order that they may be saved. 
With the iatter conception predominant, there will be a disposi- 
tion to weed men out by stricter tests, in order to constitute the 
Church a fighting force. 

Quite obviously neither conception is by itself sufficient, and 
both have to be taken into account: men are saved to serve, and 
only when they serve are they really saved. The Church must 
open its doors to all who demand entrance, and on the simplest 
terms of faith. This will bring into it a great many weak and 
unsatisfactory characters who, because the process of their puri- 
fication is slow, and to all human eyes may sometimes seem never 
so much as even to have begun, will often involve the Church 
in shame and contempt and appear to contradict its claim to 


282 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


holiness. The morally mottled appearance presented by the 
Church provides the world with what it regards as a sufficient 
disproof of the Church’s claim, offering a constant excuse to 
those who declare that otherwise they might seek an entrance. 
It is constantly maintained in these days that there are as good 
people outside the Church as there are inside, and that modern 
ethical and educational methods can produce, without religion 
and without the Church system, as fine and as useful characters. 

One must remember, however, that the Church does not pro- 
fess to consist solely of holy or perfect people, but rather of 
people who, knowing they are unholy, are seeking perfection. 
The entrance to the Church is therefore through penitence, and 
though its aim for every soul is perfection between those two 
points every grade and variety will necessarily be found. The 
Church does not challenge in the world’s counter-claims the 
assertion that people may be found in the Church as bad as those 
in the world outside; for that would be admitted, the only dis- 
tinction being that they know how bad they are. But the 
Church does challenge the assertion that the world can produce 
just as good persons as the Church claims to produce in the 
saints, a type which it declares cannot be paralleled, at least 
with frequency and continuity, outside of it. | 

The Church further asserts that the poorest sinner, who never- 
theless is penitent, is in a superior position to the person of the 
highest ethical attainment who has no consciousness of how 
much he owes to God or of how much he falls short of His 
glory. Such a person has come to the end of his attainment; 
his very ethical superiority may be merely a discouragement to 
his weaker fellows, and he has no secret of ethical renewal which 
he can pass on to others. Whereas the penitent, because of his 
consciousness both of his own failure, and of the grace of God 
to which he looks, has before him an infinite path of progress 
and an assurance of love and forgiveness for himself and for all 
men that opens out inexhaustible ethical potentialities. The 
Church need not feel it any reproach if the harlots and pub- 
licans crowd in before the Pharisees, who in these days are more 
likely to be found outside, content with a closed moral system. 


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THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 283 


On the other hand, the Church, while keeping its doors wide 
open, must see that a path runs straight and inviting from every 
point on its circumference to the center and height of sanctifica- 
tion. And it must not forget that its task is to manufacture out 
of the poorest material both saints and soldiers. On the whole, 
it can be claimed that the Church does perform this task—and 
that nowhere else can it be accomplished with the same degree 
of success. 


VIll 


The Church is subjected to further criticism. It is accused 
of not doing the work for humanity it ought, of not leading the 
great crusade for social reform, of not being alive to the spir- 
itual and material needs of common people in everyday life. 
Workers in the various humanitarian and philanthropic move- 
ments are often to be found among those who not only have no 
Church connection, but who confessedly are not even religious 
people; while many great political and social reforms have, at 
least in recent generations, had to forego the help and blessing 
of the Church. 

Fairness demands the statement that in the past it was the 
Church which took the lead and set the example in the matter 
of philanthropic and humanitarian reforms, and that many who 
now wholly give their lives to these concerns will still be found 
to owe some inspiration, if not directly then indirectly, to Chris- 
tianity and the Church. Many of our modern social reformers 
were cradled in the Christian faith and matured in the Chris- 
tian Church, and have only lost their faith or separated them- 
selves from the Church on the conviction that social, political, 
and economic reform is the dominant, if not the sole, need of 
humanity. But if the Church believes that its primary function 
is to relate men consciously to God, both for their personal sal- 
vation and in order to make effective their service to mankind, 
there can really be no complaint or criticism when the Church 
stands by this. If religion has any meaning at all, it is primary. 
The idea, to which just now there seems to be a widespread 


284 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


inclination, that love of one’s neighbor is not only primary but 
can even be made a substitute for love of God, and that social 
service is the only worship in which man need engage, requires 
searching scrutiny before its soundness can be accepted. 

We shall probably not have to advance much further in the 
history of mankind before we discover that social reform can- 
not come until men are at least converted to a belief that social 
reform is a duty; and for that we shall need divine power if 
we are not to turn to mere coercion. But far from being an 
alternative, that is an abandonment of hope; because coercion 
will certainly defeat its own ends and only erect a new tyranny 
on the razed foundations of the old. Again, it will be found 
utterly imp ssible to make the betterment of earthly conditions 
the satisfaction of all human aspirations. Since if there is no 
eternal destiny for men, we must sooner or later settle down to 
the conclusion that nothing will ever make man happy. He 
is a creature whose aspirations cannot be fulfilled, and the very 
raising of the social status and the betterment of conditions will 
only suffice to bring home to him the more poignantly the 
tragedy of his infinite ideals and his limitation to a finite life, 
and so plunge him into pessimism, melancholy, and despair. 

But even where it is acknowledged that religion is one of the 
great duties of man and the Church a valuable institution for 
inculcating those duties, there is an inclination to judge Chris- 
tianity and Church teaching by their immediate effect upon the 
purely ethical side of character and the purely social side of 
life. Does religion make a man a stronger character and a 
better citizen? Does the Church inspire social service and pro- 
duce a better social order? ‘These may well be fruits to be 
looked for and that ought to appear, but they may not appear 
immediately or perfectly, and religion does not admit that they 
are the primary things. 

Ethics must spring from a religious basis, and man’s spiritual 
vision must always outrun his ethical expression. Man’s capac- 
ity cannot be satisfied with the finite in any direction; the highest 
ethical attainment will be the more conscious of how much 
more is demanded; social relationships do not exhaust the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 285 


demands of the soul; man has in this world no enduring home 
city. It is the revelation of the Infinite that alone meets human 
need. If a man’s relation to God does not develop character or 
induce love of his neighbor, it must be because his relation to 
God is imperfect and his conception of God inadequate. If the 
influence of the immortal hope does not regulate human conduct 
and inspire justice, mercy, and sacrificial service, it is because 
the nature of immortality is misunderstood and the conditions 
governing the participation in eternal life have been overlooked. 

It is indisputable Christian teaching that if a man says he loves 
God and hates his brother he is a liar—that he does not love 
God. Nor can there be any doubt that the Christian religion 
maintains that our conduct in this life will seriously determine 
our condition in the life to come. It is therefore in holding be- 
fore men the necessity of being consciously related to God, and 
the eternal destiny for which this earth is a preparation, that 
the Church is doing the greatest social service for humanity. 
And it constantly insists upon these things as primary, because 
without them social service can never be truly rendered or 
would only end in disappointment. 

Undoubtedly the Church might be blamed for having been, 
during the past three or four centuries, indifferent if not actu- 
ally opposed to certain political and social reforms. But one 
must recollect that the conditions of human life have been 
changing swiftly and remarkably during these centuries, and 
have involved us in problems to which no one alive can actually 
see the immediate solution. Often moreover, the reforms ad- 
vocated have not only been debatable in principle and applica- 
tion, but they have frequently been proposed as a sufficient 
substitute for religion, and the denial of religion has sometimes 
been made almost a requirement for co-operation in radical 
reform. ‘This has imposed upon the Church a still more im- 
mediate and primary duty—namely, defence of that funda- 
mental faith from which all social reform derives its inspiration 
and without which it can never be brought about. Once let 
man lose his faith in God, and he will soon lose faith in man. 
Belief in conversion will be replaced by trust in coercion. 


286 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


During the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century 
a too individualistic conception of evangelical religion, and the 
intolerable economic conditions which developed, tended to 
divorce personal religion and social reform and drive them 
into mutual suspicion, opposition, and hostility. But a recovery 
is being made, perhaps on both sides. The recognition is 
spreading that religion is now pledged to reform whatever is 
unjust, while reform itself needs the faith and patience that 
religion alone can give. No one would deny that of late there 
has been a great awakening on the part of the Church as to the 
social implications of the Christian faith. But the Church will, 
so far from serving the present opportunity, only give aid to hos- 
tile forces if it yields to the temptation to substitute social re- 
form for religion, or if it neglects to keep alive the inspiration 
of faith on which all depends. 


IX 


Admittedly the modern Church has not long been aroused in 
any adequate fashion to the social needs of man. It is naturally 
argued that if the Church were in touch with divine inspiration, 
if it represented humanity’s royal priesthood, it ought to be the 
advance guard in all of these crusades and concerns. But here 
one may reply that the Church’s main duty is to keep alive 
man’s ultimate faith and to secure its all round application to 
life. And it is not fair to contrast this stupendous task and con- 
cern with the work and concern of those outside who are able 
to specialize on one item in human life, or on one point of 
human need, or are concerned with some temporary contin- 
gency. Moreover it must be remembered that the Church is 
in a divided condition, and although this may be blamable 
enough to the Church, a great deal of that division has been due 
to the general refusal to acknowledge the Church’s leadership. 
The world cannot throw off the Church’s claim to leadership 
and at the same time blame it for not leading; it cannot dismiss 
the Roman Catholic claim of infallibility, and then demand 
an infallible judgment om matters where the Church has never 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 287 


claimed to possess it; it cannot reject the authority of the 
Church, and then in some suddenly developed situation expect 
the Church to speak with authority and command the universal 
obedience of men. 

As a matter of fact, while modern men, with the exception 
of a few omniscient persons and dogmatic sects, confront the 
social chaos of our times literally unable to propose any- 
thing definite and effective that should at once be done, those 
who have exact historic and economic knowledge are aware that 
when the Church was united and its authority accepted, eco- 
nomics was conceived to be a department of theology, and con- 
siderable economic influence was exercised by the Church’s 
spiritual’ outlook and actual decrees. An increasing number 
of economic reformers, tired of the partisan theories of our 
times, are already looking back to the fundamental economic 
conceptions once accepted by Christendom—private property, 
the just price, and no usury. It is believed that these embodied 
principles which, when properly interpreted and adapted to 
modern needs, still remain fundamental. 

In regard to the menace of international war, it is only re- 
cently, with the invention of more destructive armaments, the 
growth of conscription, and the combination of economic in- 
terest and insurgent nationalism, that war has become such a 
devastating scourge and now menaces the very existence of man- 
kind. And although the Church seems inclined to stand by 
the idea that there can be such a thing as a just war, there is 
much teaching in the early Fathers as well as in the witness of 
the Quakers, against the practice of warfare as such, which no 
one calling himself a Christian can ignore. Catholic theology 
is bound to maintain that, although war may sometimes be just, 
it is not the way of charity and can never, therefore, accomplish 
any form of redemption. Moreover it is exceedingly improb- 
able that any method will be found to prevent the nations from 
having recourse to war until mankind recognizes and is glad 
to obey a higher loyalty than that which the State demands 
or can impose. This loyalty cannot be given to humanity as 
such or to any super-State, but in all likelihood it will finally 


288 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


be rendered only to a purely spiritual, yet organized, visible, 
and international body—namely, the Church. Therefore only 
in the rehabilitation of the Catholic Church is there to be 
found a real hope for the repudiation and final abolition of war. 
The Church must, of course, recruit its members from the 
world without, and so long as men of thought and men of action 
hold themselves aloof the Church is bound correspondingly to 
suffer. For while the Church’s method of salvation may save 
the wastage of our humanity which otherwise must go on and 
increase, and thus may recover for its fighting forces those who 
were wounded and put out of action, and while grace can 
immensely increase man’s natural powers and can release those 
which have been paralyzed or perverted by sin, it does not pro- 
fess to manufacture the peculiar gifts from which progressive 
thought and great leadership naturally spring. On the other 
hand, we have all too much evidence of the type of thinking 
which may be a master of scathing criticism and can attract 
and amuse us with its coruscating brilliance, which nevertheless 
utterly fails, despite its power of satire, to turn man from his 
follies, but only seems to intensify the surrounding darkness. 
We have many tragic examples of those who have set out to 
lead, yet have betrayed their cause by their own weakness, am- 
bition, or despair. We have plenty of examples of energy and 
effort which still do nothing to bless mankind, but only prove 
a social menace. The world at present needs to reconsider 
the message and meaning of the Church. For despite a tem- 
porary obscuration through the intellectual confusion of our 
times, and immense constitutional and social changes notwith- 
standing, religion still anchors humanity to an infinite hope, and 
the Church provides the only rock upon which a worthy social 
order can be built: that city of our God, designed in the 
heavens for the earth, and needing no temple, because it is itself 
at once a city and a church—the new Jerusalem and the meeting 
place where God walks with men and is known to be their God. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


A NON-CHURCHMAN’S VIEW OF THE 
CHURCHES 


In past centuries non-adherence to the Church was usually reckoned a token of 
a defective moral sense. But today it is perfectly evident that those who stand 
aloof from organized Christianity may be genuinely repelled by unworthy 
elements that seem to them inseparable from the churches as such, and the 
present chapter expresses the opinions of one who belongs to this class. 


ON=CHURCHMEN, like churchmen, differ so widely 
in their views of life, of religion, of the churches them- 
selves that no individual, in the present state of our 

knowledge, is competent to generalize for them. A scientifically 
valid generalization would have to be based upon a far-reaching 
investigation by technically trained specialists. In the absence 
of such scientific data, any discussion of the non-churchman’s 
view of the churches must necessarily proceed within the narrow 
limits of personal observation and experience. And yet the 
fundamental issue between churchmen and non-churchmen is 
of such long standing that one may hope to be acquitted of 
undue temerity in attempting to state it. It is implicit in 
Plato’s criticism of the poets as the purveyors of Greek theol- 
ogy; it brought Galileo to the bar of the Inquisition; it was 
central to the classic debate between Gladstone and Huxley 
over the tenability of the Pentateuchal story of the genesis of 
heaven and earth, and all that in them is, in the light of modern 
paleontology. In our Western world the issue arises from 
the conflict between the attitudes of mind and the intellectual 
methods of those who accept the Bible as God’s direct revela- 
tion of the origin and meaning of life, and those who seek the 
truth and the law through speculative hypothesis and scientific 
induction from ascertained facts. To the non-churchman the 
289 


290 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


unfolding universe is the true Bible whose pages we have only 
begun to be able to read. 

Because of the long struggle of iconoclastic science to free 
itself from ecclesiastical intolerance, there is a wide disposition 
among non-churchmen to evade the issue, to treat it contemptu- 
ously, or to leave it to time and the slow diffusion of knowledge 
among men. Often in recent years men of scientific eminence 
have attempted to escape its embarrassments by declaring it 
non-existent. Charles P. Steinmetz, whose reputation as an 
“electrical wizard” gave him great influence over public opin- 
ion, in the course of a lecture made a statement typical of this not 
entirely ingenuous procedure. “Inherently,” he said, ‘science 
and religion are not antagonistic, but separate, the one dealing 
with finite conclusions from our finite sense-perceptions, that is, 
the world of facts and reality; and the other with infinite con- 
ceptions, which can neither be proved nor disproved empiri- 
cally but are outside of the realms of science, in the field of 
beliens 

To non-churchmen who see religion operating as an essen- 
tial and universal biological function in the individual and the 
race, such statements are as unscientific and injurious to human 
progress as the insistence of dogmatists upon the sacrosanct 
authority of the Pentateuch. Science and religion are not 
separate. As Victor Branford has remarked in his “Science and 
Sanctity”, they spring together from the one stem of life, and 
life itself is the integral object of their endeavor. The disease 
of our contemporary civilization arises from our failure to 
establish a working relationship between religious ideals’ and 
secular knowledge. One of the great inspirations of our 
times is the increasingly earnest endeavor of churchmen and 
nonchurchmen to find common ground and unite their forces in 
guiding human affairs toward a nobler and saner estate. 

What is their common ground? Fundamentally it would 
seem to be this: all men have a religion, as distinguished from 
a formal theology, in the sense that all entertain a more or 
less definite idea of the nature of life and the universe. The 
most primitive man has his system of magic, the most modern 


a 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 291 


his creed or working hypothesis with which to fill the infinite 
void. Without this sense of wholeness the mind is divided 
against itself, is paralyzed, cannot function constructively. 
Not even the agnostic or atheist can escape this rule. Religion 
is born with consciousness, for it is of the nature of conscious- 
ness as of inanimate energy that it abhors a vacuum. Religion 
is not a matter of individual idiosyncrasy or caprice; it is, like 
breathing, a biological necessity. To be a non-churchman is 
not to be without religion. 

The non-churchman’s interest in seeking common ground 
with churchmen for the reconstruction of religious ideas in the 
light of modern knowledge is inspired by his conviction that 
the derangement of human affairs prevailing in the contem- 
porary world is largely due to the divided personality of the 
race commonly described as the conflict between religion and 
science. ‘The task confronting churchmen and non-churchmen 
alike is to re-establish the creative relevancy between religious 
revery and practical performance which was the glory of the 
ages that built the Greek temples and the Gothic cathedrals. 
“The delight and awe with which we view an ancient cathe- 
dral,” writes Victor Branford, ‘arises from the vast suggestions 
which here flood the spirit with a profound harmony. 

It was the flower of all extant knowledge and of every human 
work and piety, and so of knowledge and devotion alike, homely 
and wonderful, understood and acknowledged by all. 

Here is the chapel of the smiths, this was the chapel of the 
leather-workers. Here was the altar of the tailors, there the 
shrine of the haberdashers. The whole universe of men’s life 
was intelligently one, that is, synthetized and imagined, and 
thus through idealism and its emotion sanctified. . . . To- 
day the thing is visibly a shell, a fossil.” The gist of the 
Reformation was the effort to recapture the harmony tran- 
siently embodied in the cathedrals by a critical reappraisal 
of current religious imagery and practices and their recon- 
struction in the light of contemporary knowledge and ex- 
perience. 

The non-churchman holds much the same relation to the 


292 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


creeds and practices of the churches today which the dissenters 
held at the inception and crisis of the Reformation, with the 
difference that the revelations of science with respect to the 
nature and extent of the universe and man’s place in the cosmic 
scheme have made the earth itself seem his cathedral, and the 
building of a civilization his opportunity to share in the 
infinite creative process. In his view the churches—by per- 
petuating creedal division among men, by fostering a non- 
scientific attitude toward the problems of human relationships, 
by terrorizing men into a more or less superstitious adherence 
to a vision of life and its meaning which has lost its relevance 
to secular knowledge—obstruct that building, delay the advent 
of that very brotherhood of man, that world-wide family of 
neighborly love, to which they, like all men of good will un- 
ceasingly aspire. 

This obstruction to the development and diffusion of scien- 
tific knowledge and its acceptance as the supreme instrument 
for the consciously intelligent control of human affairs is much 
to be regretted because all non-churchmen who are not blinded 
by prejudice must concede that the Christian churches by their 
common emphasis upon the great commandments of Jesus have 
contributed in a pre-eminent degree to the establishment of 
democracy as the dominant ideal of our Western civilization. 
The churches—more than any other of the great institutional 
organizations in which our conduct and customs are embodied— 
have recognized the doctrine that in a fundamental sense men 
are equal and equally entitled to the fullest opportunities for 
development as individuals and citizens. ‘This is true not- 
withstanding the fact that at various stages of their history 
the churches have contrived by subtle distortions of logic to 
reconcile the second of the great commandments with serfdom, 
with chattel slavery, and with the inhumane exploitation of 
men, women, and children under our prevailing wage system. 
This has come about, among other reasons, because the vision 
of life which they have carried over from the Bible is essen- 
tially kingly and autocratic, and because they have failed to 
translate the inclusive precepts laid down in the commandments 


- THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 293 


into standards of precise measurement. Thus, the development 
of standards of health, of education, of wages, of compensa- 
tion for industrial accidents, of standards of civilized living 
generally has been in the main, not the work of the churches, 
but of those who in defiance of ecclesiastical restraints have 
applied the methods of science to the conservation and enrich- 
ing of the common life. 

Only very recently have the churches created within their 
own organizations research agencies for the purpose of giving 
definition and concrete content to their moral precepts, and 
the idea that it is their duty to do more than create a general 
spirit of good will among men is still emerging slowly and 
against great opposition. Philanthropy, social work, public 
health, democratic education have all made their greatest ad- 
vances since they have slipped out from under the aegis of the 
churches. And it is notorious that in these fields the official 
activities of the churches are generally second-rate because in 
our generation clergymen as a group are not scientifically edu- 
cated men. The foremost leaders in the application of modern 
knowledge and the scientific method to the problems of 
society and human relations, have been conspicuous for their 
rebellion against ecclesiastical domination and the closed atti- 
tude of mind generally characteristic of creedal dogmatists. 

In the view of the non-churchman the gravest transgression 
chargeable to the churches has been their obstruction to the 
establishment of dynamic relevancy between the new knowl- 
edge and the method of science, and the vision of brotherhood 
which they themselves have done so much to foster. Certainly 
a very large proportion of non-churchmen have been alienated 
from the Church by their personal experience of the devastat- 
ing results of this obstruction in the typical life of our modern 
communities. A valid generalization to this effect would need 
to be substantiated by the findings of thorough-going investiga- 
tion. In the absence of such scientific data one is necessarily 
thrown back upon one’s own experience in so far as it may 
fairly be assumed to be typical. 

In the frontier town where the present writer was born—and 


294 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


intellectually most of the towns in our day are frontier towns— 
the greater number of people belonged to one or another of the 
many churches, which symbolized less their common religion 
than their divisive sectarian creeds. This multiplicity of 
creedal institutions, all calling themselves Christian, was im- 
mensely perplexing to the awakening religious instinct of a child 
bred in the simple democratic ideal of brotherhood and influ- 
enced by the scientific attitude of a father who was a doctor of 
medicine, and whose library was adorned with portraits of 
Charles Darwin, Rudolph Virchow the pathologist, Louis 
Pasteur the bacteriologist, Charles Frederick Gauss the mathe- 
matician and astronomer. Far to the north, its steeple command- 
ing a sweep of the Missouri’s delta, stood what was known as the 
English Catholic Church, although its communicants were 
principally Irish. As its weather-vane shifted with the wind, it 
pointed to the Protestant Episcopal church, then to the North- 
ern Presbyterian church, the German Lutheran church, the 
Methodist, German Evangelical, African Baptist, Southern 
Presbyterian, and German Catholic churches. The Catholic 
and German Protestant churches carried bells in their steeples. 

Each Saturday evening these bells broke into a turbulent 
clangor that filled the countryside with wild music. Because 
of some deeply felt human association, they were more potent 
to stir the religious emotions than the golden harvest moon or 
the Swan coursing with outspread wings the endless, awe- 
inspiring trail of the Milky Way. ‘They filled the heart with 
a longing for fellowship which was curiously chilled when as 
a non-communicant one joined the communicants in worship. 
Professing allegiance to the great commandments, their sec- 
tarian attitudes were harshly at variance with that inclusive love 
of one’s neighbor which Jesus taught. Not humility and mag- 
nanimous forbearance, but dogmatic arrogance and competitive 
rivalry with respect even to their fellow-Christians in other 
denominations pervaded the services. Almost always one 
emerged from these houses of worship into the free air of open 
day through an atmosphere charged with a certain pharisaical 
self-complacency. The importance attached to minute points 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 295 


of particularist doctrine, and the aptness of the brethren to 
make them the bones of most unloving contention, was dis- 
concerting to one unfamiliar with the parochial environment 
and group-experience out of which these doctrines had arisen. 
They were the crystallizations of ancestral reveries and folk- 
ways which these Irishmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, 
Yankees, and Southerners had carried over from their home- 
lands into a new environment where their relevancy to reality 
had disappeared. They were holding fast to fossilized ideas 
that to the non-churchman seemed obviously unaccordant with 
common knowledge and the actual mode of life in a democratic 
and industrial community. This irrelevance produced a divided 
personality in the individuals which was manifest in the con- 
tradictions between their Sabbath professions as churchmen 
and their week-day performance as citizens. It inhibited the 
development of community ideals and purposes, the results of 
which found expression in the ugly and inharmonious buildings, 
the unbeautiful and uninspired arrangement of the streets, the 
absence of music or art through which the religious emotions 
of the entire community might have found utterance. It is 
because this state of affairs is so widely characteristic of con- 
temporary communities not only on the geographical frontier, 
but also throughout the world, that ‘“Main Street’ was so im- 
mediately and generally recognized as having a typical sig- 
nificance. 

There were two outstanding issues upon which the church- 
men united, and both of them illustrated the fundamental dif- 
ference of attitude which differentiate consistent churchmen 
from non-churchmen who are imbued with the scientific spirit. 
One was the programme of instruction in the public schools. 
The other was the application of modern scientific knowledge 
to the regulation and control not only of public health, but 
also of individual health, in cases where the disease was in- 
fectious or communicable. The churchmen were united in 
their insistence that the Bible should be taught as setting the 
boundaries of the truth; the exceptions to this rule were those 
who believed that the lay use of the Bible itself was a matter 


296 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


of doubtful wisdom, and that instruction in this as in all other 
matters should proceed under the sanctified direction of ec- 
clesiastical authority. The non-churchmen were equally united 
in excluding the Bible from the public schools altogether, be- 
cause of the supernaturalism associated with it and because of 
the always imminent danger that it would become an apple of 
discord; on this side the exceptions were those disposed to have 
the Bible made the subject of critical interpretation together 
with Homer, the Talmud, the “Song of the Niebelungen”, and 
the Upanishads. 

Essentially the same kind of conflict arose when modern scien- 
tific technique was first applied to the control of the public 
health. Our town had been subject to recurrent epidemics of 
typhoid. The writer’s father, as the town’s public health officer, 
traced their origin to a well in our largest factory near to which 
the drain from a religious institution passed. He condemned 
the well and the drain. Immediately churchmen of all denomi- 
nations united against him, first on the ground that epidemics 
were God’s disciplinary visitations upon His people. and further 
because it was sacrilege to associate contamination with a con- 
secrated religious institution. It may be said that such cases 
are largely outdated. Yet in view of the notorious instance of 
a school-teacher being brought to the bar of a modern tribunal, 
charged with the violation of a State law forbidding the teach- 
ing of evolution, the validity of the above assumption is perhaps 
not well established. However that may be, such occurrences 
fairly illustrate the divergence between churchmen and non- 
churchmen in general with respect to the state of our knowledge 
of life and the universe, and the most fruitful method of in- 
creasing knowledge and diffusing it among men. And it seems 
fair to urge that churchmen—while adhering to the Bible and 
the creeds that have clustered about it as God’s revelation of the 
truth and the whole truth respecting the origin and nature of 
life and the universe and His will toward men—do neverthe- 
less enlist the aid of scientific discovery in the practical conduct 
of their lives. 

The great ages in the world’s history have been those in which, 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 297 


as in the age of the cathedrals, men’s religious vision has been 
in dynamic relevancy to secular knowledge, when aspiration and 
faith have guided men’s capacity for creative achievement. 
Modern science has enormously widened the scope of our 
vision, has placed at our disposal the instruments for building 
a civilization worthy of a universe of whose magnificence we are 
just beginning to be fully aware. If the churches, as the ex- 
ponents of organized religion, are to fulfil their historical func- 
tion of fusing the common ideals and aspirations of men into 
integral visions of the meaning and end of the individual and 
community life, they will, so it seems to the non-churchman, 
have to reconstruct the imagery of faith and worship in har- 
mony with current secular knowledge. If they fail in this, 
men will increasingly turn from their archaic creeds, dogmas, 
and rituals “to the deep impulses and soaring desires which 
are the stuff, at once vital and mystical, of religion”, and to 
which scientific discovery and trail-blazing hypothesis are open- 
ing ever new channels of release. Their temples and rites will 
become one with the temples and rites of the Greeks and 
Egyptians. 

For religion is not of the churches alone. It is born in all 
men with consciousness. Only through the integration of sci- 
ence and religion, of knowledge and faith, can the divided 
personality of the age be made whole, so that men may partici- 
pate consciously and effectively in the creative process through 
which the finite becomes one with the infinite. Already there 
are signs in the arts—in painting and music, in poetry and archi- 
tecture, and in great works of engineering and regional plan- 
ning—that this integration is approaching. Unless the churches 
participate in it, unless they guide it, it will leave them in the 
archaeological deposits of history. 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE CHURCH’S VIEW OF NON-CHURCHMANSHIP 


Churchmen are by no means oblivious to the justice contained in criticisms 

levelled by non-Churchmen. And yet they feel that the evils complained of are 

exaggerated, that many of these evils belong to the past while others are being 

rapidly corrected. But Churchmen feel most of all that the critics in isolating 

themselves are missing an invaluable opportunity to give constructive aid in the 
group advance. 


HE most important enterprise in which men can engage 
is so to present Christianity that it shall be understood, 
accepted, and lived. It is the one hope for the future; 
and it can be realized if we understand the nature of the task. 
It is the habit of some to speak of the Church’s twentieth 
century problems as unique in character and difficulty. Noth- 
ing could be more incorrect or discouraging. That which is 
new in each age is largely incidental; the age itself is the 
result of great forces beginning and growing through earlier 
ages, and the secret of today is in the heart of yesterday. 
History clearly reveals the fact that Christ was born in the 
hour of the world’s most desperate need. More than three 
centuries earlier Plato had declared that the dark tide of human 
passion would never be rolled back except by the love of a divine 
person. The coming of Christ was a challenge. “To as many 
as received him he gave power”. But in the main “His own 
received him not”, and answered the challenge by crucifying the 
Lord, stoning Stephen to death, and hunting down all the dis- 
ciples. When the most zealous persecutor was converted to be 
the most zealous Apostle he discovered the Gentile world 
equally difficult to conquer. Paul found his way barred by the 
policy and power of magistrates, the interest and craft of priests, 


the learning and pride of philosophers, and the prejudices and 
298 


———— os 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 299 


passions of the people. It is unfair and untrue to declare, as 
certain writers do, that the task which confronts Christianity to- 
day is greater than that which confronted the Apostles when 
the Master sent them forth to win the world for him. 

Never has the power of Christ been so strong as it is today. 
Never before have the intellect, character, and conscience of 
mankind turned so sincerely and confidently to him as the light 
of the world. Doubtless the cause of Christ is threatened by 
powerful foes without, and doubtless it is seriously menaced 
by various forms of disloyalty within. But let us not be de- 
ceived as we look out upon the field. If the Seer at Patmos, at 
a time when persecution had almost exterminated the first 
planting of the Church, could be so encouraged by the stead- 
fastness of believers unto death that he could shout from the 
loneliness of his exile, “the kingdoms of this world are become 
the kingdoms of our Lord”, then with how much greater justice 
may such a claim be made in our time. 

The most powerful and constructive thought today is def- 
initely Christian. However bad our practice may be, the 
theories upon which we base law and justice, the organization 
of government, industry, and society are Christian. Let the 
confession be made instantly that our conduct and practice are 
seriously defective, that we constantly seem to be utter hypo- 
crites, it is yet true that we know that we have but one light, 
however haltingly we walk in it, but one leader who has proved 
himself the Master of the souls of men. Many who have denied 
him more than thrice are yielding to his matchless power; many 
are following the steps of the other wise men and offering them- 
selves and their substance for his service. 

The problem is to win all to his way and worship. A vast 
enterprise, obviously; but alas for those who can be discouraged 
when confronted with the victories won for Christ in the new 
conception of humanity, the new dignity of labor, the high and 
rightful place given to woman, the sacredness of the child, the 
responsibility of wealth, the influence of the parable of the Good 
Samaritan, the effort of the nations to outlaw war and to find 
glory in reasonable co-operation rather than in unreasonable 


300 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


and hateful rivalry. Making large allowance for all our fail- 
ures, all our sin and shame, it is yet true that the world is more 
sincerely influenced by Christ than ever before, more sincerely 
turned to him as its one undoubted leader. 

Why is the victory so long delayed? The answer forces us 
to reveal the darker side of the picture. 

The lack of unity in the Church largely explains the limited 
rate and extent of progress. Organic unity is not essential, 
however desirable it may appear to many. Buta vastly greater 
measure of unity in spirit and in service is not only possible, 
but is to such an extent demanded by world conditions and by 
the reasonable expectations of the unshepherded multitudes, 
that the lack of such unity seems hard to understand. 

A hopeful factor in the situation lies in the frank confession 
of their fault on the part of the various Christian communions, 
and in the constructive efforts which nearly all are making for 
unity of spirit and service. Analysis and disintegration are of 
the past; the hope and effort of the Church today are for syn- 
thesis and unity. And it is a fact that there are large com- 
munions of Christians today who, generally speaking, are more 
fully in sympathy with each other than certain differing schools 
of thought within those communions. The history of Chris- 
tianity shows an amazing change of emphasis, from time to 
time. It reveals moreover that it is wise not to emphasize too 
many things and not over-emphasize anything, and that what 
the world has ever needed from the Church and needs today 
has never been the subject of controversy, and is generally and 
gladly conceded. That is, the acceptance of God as the Father 
of us all, and the consequent recognition of all men as brothers; 
our responsibility to God and our brethren; and our responsi- 
bility for the growth of our own soul, learned and fulfilled by 
our knowledge of the teaching and example of Christ, who 
alone has given the world an inspiring revelaton of the mind 
and heart of God. 

Here is no suggestion of a shorter creed for universal ac- 
ceptance. It is merely an attempt to emphasize that which is 
primary and permanent in the approach of the Church to those 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 301 


outside its folds. Surely there must come increasing agree- 
ment as to the reasonableness of this common ground. Many 
will feel that a larger presentation should in due course be made 
of the historic articles of the faith. To this there would be 
little objection from any source if in the teacher and the teach- 
ing the vital contact between faith and life be maintained. The 
world is little interested in dogma as such; it is intensely in- 
terested in teaching accompanied by the obvious proof of its 
value. The pragmatic test may more properly be applied to 
philosophy than to theology, but the Church cannot complain 
if, while it teaches, its pupils are heard to whisper, “By their 
fruits ye shall know them.” 

The severest critics of the Church are within the Church. 
This is a sign not of weakness but of strength. Often they are 
too impatient, too destructive, too discouraged to be useful. 
Only those critics can best help who have a living faith, and the 
historic sense, and understanding sympathy. ‘Their number is 
increasing in every branch of the Church; they thank God for 
the marvellous triumphs won by the Master in every depart: 
ment of life and in every corner of the earth; they confess the 
blindness and selfishness which postpone the greater victory; 
and they are planning larger enterprises for God and His 
people. If they do not lay the axe of judgment at the root 
of every tree which fails to bring forth good fruit it is not 
because they too are blind, but because of their faith in the 
Master of all the trees, their readiness to cultivate the back- 
ward tree, their knowledge of the past results of such care. 

Christ is rapidly becoming the ideal of all mankind; but 
when those who look hopefully to him turn to Christians for 
proof of the value of following Christ they are often tempted 
to despair. They have a right to expect Christians to be dif- 
ferent, to present a higher level of character and conduct than 
others. Yet they find many of those who profess Christ are 
not transformed by his power but are as much conformed to 
selfish ways as any worldlings. The Church must be profoundly 
concerned in all this not only for the restoration and educa- 
tion of its people, but for the sake of their influence in the 


302 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


community. The essential institutions and activities of life 
should be transformed in beauty and power by the spirit of 
Christ in the hearts of his disciples. That is exactly what has 
happened increasingly through nineteen centuries. And yet 
our failures are so many and so conspicuous that the world is 
critical. 

For example, the home is supremely the training ground of 
character. The foundation of religion is in the influence of 
home upon children. It is what they see rather than what they 
are told which most deeply influences them. If parents are 
merely professing Christians there is danger that their home 
may represent a lower level of thought and conduct than the 
homes of those who make no such profession but are conscious 
of the need of ethical teaching and example. The greatest 
peril to civilization is the number of families with no true 
home life, no examples of sacrificial love, no sincere recognition 
of God, no leading in His ways, no effort to serve Him or to 
serve His people. Whatever explanations may be offered by 
professing Christians for the lack of such an atmosphere and 
such a training in their homes, the explanation never rises to 
the level of a justified excuse. The materialism of our day, the 
hurry of life, the unwillingness to impose religion or rules 
upon children, so far from excusing merely emphasize the need 
of greater wisdom and love for the attainment of an essential 
result. When physical health is greatly endangered we make 
greater efforts to defend it. If our homes are to be Christian, 
then more of the parents who count themselves within the 
Church should be striving to reflect not Mammon but Christ, 
and to suffer the “little ones to come unto him”. Nothing can 
fill the home with beauty and truth and goodness except a 
thorough-going loyalty to the Master in the hearts of parents. 
Such a home is the strongest witness to the Master’s power— 
just as a home, nominally Christian, with every door closed 
against Christ, is false-witness against the Lord and derision 
in the mouth of his enemies. 

It should be easier to recognize the Christian in business. 
While it is true that a large proportion of the rank and file in 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 303 


commercial and industrial life are professing Christians, it is 
also true that many of them seem to be influenced by no higher 
ethical ideals than their non-Christian and non-professing 
Christian associates. Indeed it is by no means uncommon to 
find the latter standing courageously for high principles or 
rendering noble self-sacrificing service which we should rejoice 
to observe in a Christian. Not that we fail to rejoice, for it is 
evidence of the far-reaching influence of our Master’s teaching 
and example. But such instances, and they are not rare, chal- 
lenge the Christian in business to prove his loyalty. He must 
evidently work harder to make men than to make money. He 
must be scrupulously honest, just and fair not only in dealings 
with customers and clients, but with every fellow-workman, 
every employee. He must know how to temper justice with 
mercy always, must be greater than his business, not absorbed 
by it until the heart is hardened, and the mind is contracted, 
and the joy of life fades. He must quite evidently possess both 
a vocation and an avocation; and the avocation must be clearly 
revealed as merely the means by which he shall better fulfil 
his vocation. Paul worked at the avocation of tent-making to 
pay his way while he devoted his remaining time to fulfilling 
his vocation of advancing the cause of Christ. Every Christian 
is called to do exactly that. But absorption in business makes 
many Christians forgetful, makes them drop down to un- 
Christian levels, makes them a hindrance and not a help to the 
high cause which they profess. a 

In no place is the influence of a Christian more critically 
important than in the pleasure-loving world of friendly inter- 
course known as society. That realm represents thoroughly 
wholesome, normal desires, and its votaries are found not in one 
category only but in all. We need an authoritative History of 
Society, its origins, the evolution of its conventions, its rise and 
fall and the causes thereof, the peril and glory of its power. 
Its pages would shine at times with the light of victorious moral 
courage, and at times be saddened by the defeat that came with 
a traitor’s kiss. 

The perils of this form of the social life are so many, so subtle, 


304 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


so powerful that from time to time the Church has condemned 
the world of pleasure as hopelessly wicked, the stronghold of 
Satan, and has imposed heavy penalties upon its children who 
entered those portals. The hermits and monks of earlier times 
and the Puritans of a later period exemplified this attitude 
toward society. Many of us have lived in communities where 
the drama and the dance were held in abhorrence by Christian 
folk and were considered certain to lead to the everlasting fires. 

Many have realized the folly and wrong of surrendering 
to the powers of darkness those good gifts of God which had 
been misused and abused. Social intercourse is wholesome; the 
modern drama had its origin in the miracle plays of the Church; 
the duty of Christians is to rescue and cleanse and restore. 

But we are not doing it. It is unnecessary to diagnose the 
social maladies of the present, unnecessary to outline the plots 
of certain numerous popular plays, which for shamelessness 
in word and act, in gesture and apparel, reflect as seriously 
upon our intelligence as upon our morality. Christian men and 
women have the power to control all these destructive influences 
and to bring our social order with its pleasures and recreations 
into conformity with the spirit of Christ. Prohibitions and 
compulsions for this purpose are unnecessary and wrong. We 
can refrain from evil; we can refuse to patronize that which is 
destructive and indecent; such enterprises would fail without 
the support received from professing Christians. We can over- 
come evil with good; we can introduce and encourage forms 
of social intercourse and pleasure which appeal to our finer 
qualities and not to our worst passions. We have the brains, the 
ability, the influence. We seem to lack the will. If we excuse 
ourselves by denying that the situation is serious enough to 
justify any spectacular and eccentric action, then we are too 
deaf to hear our Master’s call and too dense to realize that 
“eccentric” really means having another center than one’s self 
—and that this is our supreme need at this hour. In our homes, 
in our work, in society, it is the duty and the high privilege 
of a Christian to be an ambassador for Christ. Many rise to 
that high level; many more come no nearer to it than do the 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 305 


multitudes who make no profession of religion; the dead weight 
of their disloyalty has slowed down the progress of the Church. 

Not that all the saints are dead; far from it, there are as true 
saints on earth today as ever in history, and there are far more 
of them. Some of them are in the Church, but kindled by 
the Holy Spirit a sacred fire must warm our hearts and illumine 
our vision before the practice of the Church can approximate 
to its theory. The Spirit is willing. When shall we have 
the courage to look and listen and obey? When that time comes 
it will bring in sight the solution of our problems; we shall 
find the path of true Christian unity; we shall be one in Christ, 
one in love and service; we shall go forth in this new Pentecost 
speaking in other tongues than those of convenience or con- 
vention. And then will men again take knowledge of the 
fact that the disciples have been with Jesus. 

But not now. Apparently we are not ready to advance. That 
must seem strange in a time distinguished above all others for 
convincing proof of man’s capacity for heroism and sacrifice. 
One must believe that the day is not distant when “the moral 
substitute for war” will be found in daring to be Christians, and 
that men will discover their highest joy in saving life, not in 
destroying but in fulfilling. The happiest revelation of human 
capacity lies before us, here in this world, and so near to us 
that it is amazing that we do not press on to the realization. 

We are conscious of those who are frankly antagonistic both 
to the Church and to the Master. ‘The cause is found some- 
times in ignorance, often a wilful ignorance, sometimes in 
prejudice because of Christian disloyalty, sometimes in pes- 
simism resulting from continued disobedience to the voice of 
conscience. ‘“They wi// not come that they might have life.” 

A much larger group are frankly indifferent. ‘They range 
from cultivated pagans down to those who are unthinking 
followers of mere animal instincts. ‘To these the soul means 
little; they refuse to take sides in the contest of the spirit for 
victory over the flesh, and they do not see or do not care that 
such a refusal makes them the most dangerous foes of the spirit. 
There is more hope of convincing a frank opponent than of 


306 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


winning one who is not interested. These two groups are a 
challenge to the Church. We have enough intelligence to 
make the critical issue plain for all men to see, if we have 
enough devotion to lead the way in personal loyalty and sac- 
rificial service. 

The third group are the particular concern of the Church— 
those who hold aloof from membership in the Church and yet 
profess to believe and to practise Christianity. Their reasons 
for refusing membership should be briefly stated. 

Many disapprove of the Church because of alleged hypoc- 
risy; they accuse the Church of disbelief, disobedience, selfish- 
ness, pride, of ‘regarding the persons of men”, of being careful 
of the rich and careless of the poor. These charges are not 
altogether true; but not one of them is altogether false. The 
Church can and must do much to win a more favorable judg- 
ment from honest critics. At the same time it is proper to 
remind such critics that no organization can be fairly judged 
by its disloyal members; that we do not condemn all the Apostles 
because of Judas; that we do not refuse to accept money because 
some counterfeits are in circulation; that the remedy for lack of 
patriotism is not to denounce the constitution and the form 
of government, but for all patriots, within parties and without, 
to combine for practising a more intense loyalty. 

Others hold aloof because they consider that the Church as 
an organization is unnecessary, which really means that among 
these also a finer spirit and method must be convincingly em- 
ployed. All intelligent folk must approve intelligent organ- 
ization. 

There are also many who are not in the Church because of 
unwillingness or unreadiness to subscribe to the conditions of 
membership. Let it simply be conceded at once that in many 
communities today there is a growing conviction that, as the 
conditions for entering school are less exacting than those for 
graduation, so there should be a baptismal confession of faith 
suitable for beginners, as attractive and inclusive as our Lord’s 
invariable attitude toward new disciples. The Church’s faith 
cannot be diluted to the taste of individuals; but the Church 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 307 


can refrain from demanding more than its Lord required, 
and can so live its faith as to commend the latter to all men. 
It must do this immeasurably more than at present. 

There are two great armies of Christians, one within the 
Church, and one holding aloof from it. Within these armies, 
too, are very large groups of intensely sincere followers of the 
Master, divided by an invisible wall, speaking different lan- 
guages, and yet constantly manifesting the same wise and loving 
spirit of Christ. Clearly there is need of a mutual recognition 
of a common high membership. 

It is possible for men to meet on common ground. When they 
meet, drawn together by “the spirit” and not separated by “the 
letter”, they find almost invariably that the common ground 
increases, the bond of relationship strengthens; they believe not 
less but more, and they are conscious of the presence and power 
of Him “whom, having not seen, they love”. 

Sincere Christians within and without the Church need each 
other, and the Master needs their united comradeship and 
service, and the world needs him, and can find him only in 
those who live and love and lead in his spirit. 


CHAPTER. L 


WOMEN AND THE CHURCHES 


In contemporary social and political life the opening of equal opportunities 
to men and women is being taken more and more for granted. Is the same 
to be true in the churches of the future? Or does the distinction in sex 
carry with it necessarily a corresponding distinction in ecclesiastical function? 


HE nineteenth century and the first quarter of the 

twentieth have marked an extraordinary advance accom- 

plished by women in almost every department of life. 
The questions inevitably arise, is this due to the influence of 
Christianity; and has it been, on the whole, in spite rather than 
because of organized religion? 

Some will point to the attitude of opposition and hostility 
assumed by nearly every branch of organized Christianity 
towards the emancipation of women. Others will urge that the 
advance of women in countries even nominally Christian has 
been in no sense paralleled by anything that has happened 
in countries not under Christian influence; there the position of 
women has been almost if not altogether stationary. But if or- 
ganized religion has, in this as in other matters, shown itself 
predominantly conservative, the principles of Christ are of their 
very nature dynamic and continually work their way out into 
the thought and practice of men in spite of official Opposition. 
And although organized Christianity has too often shown itself 
indifferent or even hostile to what we now regard as progress, 
nevertheless the influence of Christian teaching in the world has 
been dynamic to the point of being revolutionary. 

Undoubtedly it was the Society of Friends which gave the 
first great impetus to belief in the spiritual equality of men and 
women. The heroic age of this movement within the Society, 
however, ended more than a century ago. But “at the close of 

308 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 309 


the eighteenth century the Wesleyan revival spread over Eng- 
land and once again lit up the prophetic fires in the hearts of 
women as well as of men.’”’?’ Women began to take a part in the 
work of the Wesleyan Church as class-leaders, prayer-leaders, 
sick-visitors, teachers, and occasionally as preachers. ‘Their 
great chieftain, John Wesley, himself after some hesitation said 
that, “God owns women in the conversion of sinners, and who 
am I that I should withstand God?” | 
Selina Countess of Huntingdon,—who died in the same year 
as Wesley (1791),—though she remained nominally a member 
of the Church of England and did not preach herself, “gathered 
round her a group of men who became known as Lady Hunting- 
dons’ preacher. She built chapels, purchased buildings, erected 
Trevecca College for theological students, and appointed min- 
isters at her own pleasure”. Other women felt themselves called 
to the regular exercise of the prophetic office; and the portrait 
of Dinah Morris in ““Adam Bede”, though drawn from a single 
individual, was representative of a more numerous class. Un- 
fortunately the tide of enthusiasm waned, and in 1835 “the con- 
ference expressed strong disapproval of female preaching 
and female preaching almost ceased to exist for a pro- 
tracted period.” Among the Bible Christians, however, where 
the influence of the Quakers appears to have been stronger, 
women continued to preach and excel in other good works. “By 
1819 there were thirty travelling preachers—sixteen men and 
fourteen women; and in 1823 one hundred women were serving 
as preachers, local or itinerant.” Primitive Methodists also 
have made much use of the prophetic ministry of women. 
More noteworthy than any other was unquestionably 
Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army. Although a strong be- 
liever in the spiritual and intellectual equality of men and 
women, this remarkable woman thought at first of nothing more 
than to labor with her pen and by her private personal influence. 
Yet once she had with great reluctance begun to preach,—under 
a strong sense of urgency and no doubt guided by the Holy 
Spirit,—for twenty-five years (so she writes), “I was never 
allowed to have another quiet Sabbath when I was well enough 


310 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


to stand and speak.” So powerful was her appeal and so won- 
derful the response in the conversion of many thousands who 
heard her, that she gave in her own person an object-lesson in 
that equality which she claimed. It is difficult to believe that 
the Salvation Army owes more to General Booth himself than it 
did and does to the inspiration and influence of “the mother of 
the Army”. 

It is now very generally recognized in the Protestant churches 
that there is in principle no bar to the admission of women to 
all offices—including that of the ordained ministry—of the 
Church. There remain some obstacles, however, besides the 
great and in many cases still unscaled barrier of popular preju- 
dice. Except in the United States very few women preachers 
Or ministers actually exist. And even in the United States, 
although there are some thousands of them, a large proportion 
of these belong to the smaller and more eccentric sects. Dr. 
Antoinette Blackwell was the first woman to be ordained a 
minister. In 1852 she was passed by the Congregational Church 
in New Jersey, though later in life she became a Unitarian. 
On the whole, Unitarianism and Congregationalism have been 
kinder to the claims of women than other denominations. Yet 
the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw was ordained minister in 
the Methodist Protestant Church and exercised a very powerful 
influence in the United States. She became a speaker of inter- 
national and world-wide reputation and was almost as well 
known in Europe as in her native land. Probably her work on 
political platforms as a leader of the woman suffrage movement 
made an even deeper impression on the public and a little ob- 
scured her religious work. 

In Great Britain the position is theoretically much the same, 
but in practice there is a greater reluctance to admit women to 
the ordained ministry or to the more influential positions in 
any Protestant Church. In the Presbyterian Church of Scot- 
land women may not even be elders; in the same Church in 
England they are now admitted to this office. Even in Scotland 
women are—very occasionally—invited to preach in Presby- 
terian churches. It is still very rare for any woman to be in 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 311 


full charge of the church even among what in England are 
called the free churches. 

On the Continent of Europe things appear to be moving still 
more slowly. But the grant of equal rights to women in the 
Protestant churches of Germany (with the exception of the right 
of becoming ministers) has resulted in placing many women in 
positions on official church bodies. In Hungary the Reformed 
Church University has opened its theological faculty to women; 
yet although this does not allow of their becoming anything 
more than teachers in schools it gives women a chance of demon- 
strating an understanding of theology. In Switzerland, for the 
first time in history, two women have been invited during the 
last few years to preach from the historic pulpit of the Cathedral 
of Geneva. It should be observed that, even if both these invi- 
tations were extended to the speakers on special occasions and 
not as part of the ordinary routine of the cathedral work, the 
mere fact of women preaching from a pulpit of such world- 
wide fame created a deep impression. 

The case is different with regard to churches emphasizing 
more strongly the sacratnental and sacerdotal ideals. Some 
progress is being made, nonetheless, especially in the Church 
of England and churches in communion with it. Bishops from 
all these communions met in conference at Lambeth Palace in 
the summer of 1921. A special commission was appointed to 
consider the position and ministry of women in the Church. 
The report of this commission marked an extraordinary ad- 
vance on anything that had been advocated before, except by 
the unconditionally progressive. Although it was not formally 
adopted in its entirety, the resolutions of the conference itself 
did embody the substance of what the commission had decided. 
Besides recognizing the right of women to elect and to be 
elected to all church councils including the supreme one—the 
Church Assembly itself—it made important recommendations 
with regard to the ancient Order of Deaconesses. This order, 
the only one of which it is fairly safe to say that it was 
recognized by the early Christian Church (too little being 
known of the so-called Order of Widows and Virgins to be of 


312 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


any value to us in the twentieth century), was in a sense revived 
by the Reformed churches on the Continent and brought into 
prominence by the famous Deaconess Institution at Kaisers- 
werth, on the Rhine, in 1833. In 1852 Archbishop Tait or- 
dained the first deaconess of the Anglican Church, and other 
ordinations followed. Unfortunately the word deaconess has 
been taken into use without any very clear idea as to its original 
meaning. In 1891, however, the Upper House of Canterbury 
Convocation passed certain resolutions the first of which stated 
that ‘“deaconesses according to the best authorities formed an 
order of ministry in the early Church”, while the second laid it 
down that a deaconess should be admitted in solemn form by the 
bishop with laying on of hands. The Lambeth Conference of 
1920 passed a resolution declaring that the time had come when 
the diaconate of women should be restored formally and canon- 
ically and be recognized throughout the Anglican communion. 
It also resolved that, with the approval of the bishop and the 
parish priest, the deaconess should be allowed to read Morning 
and Evening Prayer in church, and also in church to lead in 
prayer and, under license of the bishop, to exhort and instruct 
the congregation. Further resolutions recommended that lay 
women should be given opportunities of speech in consecrated 
buildings and permitted to lead in prayer in other than the 
statutory services. 

The immediate effect of these resolutions has been much 
smaller than was at first hoped. ‘Their special importance to 
women lay in the recognition of the diaconate for women as an 
“order” even if not actually “holy orders”. It is naturally on 
this point that discussion has been most heated, and on which- 
ever side of the argument one stands, its significance is very 
great. In 1921 a committee of the two Houses of Convo- 
cation of Canterbury reported that there was “no historical 
justification” for the belief that ordination of a deaconess con- 
ferred on her the grace of holy orders. Convocation of York, 
on the other hand, fully approved the resolution of the Lambeth 
Conference in all respects, both as regards lay women and 
deaconesses, except that the deaconess is only to read Morning 











The Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw Miss Maude Royden 
WOMEN AND THE MINISTRY 


Montessori 


Viscountess Astor Countess of Huntingdon 
EMINENT WOMEN 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 313 


and Evening Prayer and the Litany where circumstances make 
it desirable, and there is no mention of her “instructing and 
exhorting the congregation”. Convocation of Canterbury does 
not approve of women either speaking or leading in prayer in 
church unless “to women and children”. 

Yet in spite of delays and obstruction, it is clear that the 
Lambeth resolutions and report are having a widespread in- 
fluence. Both in the United States and in England women have 
been invited to preach in some of the cathedrals. A number 
of women—it is impossible to find out exactly how many— 
have now preached in parish churches, generally on week-days. 
Some have preached on Sundays, evading the restriction on 
“statutory services” by a concession on the part of the vicar to 
close the service and give the benediction before instead of 
after the sermon. The whole question of women’s work in the 
Church is taken much more seriously than it was. Boards have 
been set up in each diocese at which application for the bishop’s 
licence are considered. An examination similar to that re- 
quired for lay readers is held for diocesan women messengers, 
women catechists, and parochial women workers. The salaries 
and status of such women still compare very unfavorably with 
the men’s, but they are being given more responsible posi- 
tions and greater scope for initiative. Women churchwardens, 
women sidesmen, women reading the lessons, women singing in 
the choir, women serving at the altar no longer create anything 
like the excitement that would formerly have been aroused. 

In other parts of the British Empire things are not moving so 
fast. There are deaconesses in Canada, but when it was pro- 
posed that a deaconess should be elected to the General Synod 
of the United Church of Canada, opposition was offered by 
two canons, one of whom threatened to “leave in disgust if a 
woman were admitted”. The opposition won. 

In South Africa the very word “communicant” was at one 
time defined as “a male person who communicates” a certain 
number of times in the year! This has recently been altered; 
women are now “communicants” and as such able to vote for 
candidates for the church councils. They are eligible for 


314 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


election to parochial councils, provided they do not outnumber 
the men, but an attempt to make them eligible for diocesan 
councils was defeated. Bishops are elected by the clergy of 
the diocese; but the House of Laymen has a right of veto, and 
though women may vote for members of the House they have 
a very indirect share in the choice of their diocesan. They may 
also act as churchwardens. 

In Australia greater progress has taken place. The Bishop 
of Gippsland, who was present at the Lambeth Conference of 
1920, was confirmed there in the view he already strongly held 
that the Church in Australia should make far greater use than 
hitherto of “fully trained ordained women” and “give them 
the largest possible scope and mission”. By “fully trained or- 
dained women” the bishop meant deaconesses and, in using this 
phrase, although he makes it clear that he does not consider 
the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood, he does 
regard the diaconate as in itself an order. He writes: “I am 
one of the very few to demand that the condition of the min- 
istry of women shall be as wide and comprehensive in its scope 
and opportunity as that of the ministry of men—apart from 
the functions of priesthood. . . . I decided to establish the 
Order of Deaconesses and to include in their scope pastoral, 
hortative, speaking, and nursing work. I saw a vision of these 
trained women of the Church doing for us what the nuns do 
for the Roman Catholic peoples.” Pioneers in these matters 
are looking eagerly to Gippsland to watch the progress of the 
bishop’s great experiment—an experiment unfortunately ham- 
pered and even actually endangered by the difficulty of raising 
funds. It should be added that rather recently a special service 
for girls’ clubs in a Melbourne church was taken entirely by 
women, the sermon being preached by the head deaconess with 
the archbishop’s permission. In New Zealand there are 
deaconesses both professed and of the irregular or unprofessed 
type. They undertake practically all the work done by women 
in connection with the Church. Lay readers are always men. 
. It would seem that the greatest scope for the ministry of 
women in the Church of England lies in its great dependency 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 315 


of India. The native women there can hardly be reached by 
the men missionaries and, in spite of any opposition, it seems 
certain that there must be a great future for deaconesses—who, 
in fact, are already rendering splendid service. Meanwhile let 
us note that, at the fifth triennial meeting of the General Synod 
of the Church in China, held in March, 1924, it was decided 
not only that women may be delegated to Synod in full equality 
with men, but that deaconesses should rank as clergy, with 
licence to take such part in services in consecrated buildings as 
was recommended by the Lambeth Conference. While this 
Synod was in session the women of Canton gathered together 
with representatives of most of the other dioceses to work out a 
constitution for a Women’s Missionary Service League, which 
is intended to promote all kinds of service to the Church by 
women in China and to bind them together in one organization. 
Approval and recognition of the League was given by both 
houses of Synod. 

The general advance to be recorded is undoubtedly due to 
the enormous amount of service, unofficial and often unrecog- 
nized and unpaid, which has been given by women to the Church 
during the last hundred years. As Sunday school teachers, as 
district visitors, as organizers and administrators in a humble 
capacity, in works of charity, and above all in what is known 
as “rescue work” they have been so useful that it is difficult to 
conceive how the work of the Church could have been done 
without them. One might also look upon the wives of 
clergymen as a special “order”! They may be regarded as the 
unpaid ministerial assistants or curates of their husbands. The 
congregation or parish is felt to have a claim on the strength 
and time of such a woman, which sometimes makes it difficult 
for her to discharge her vocation as wife and mother. In- 
creasing in volume and in efficiency, these efforts have at last 
impressed the imagination and convinced the reason of church- 
men. Many of them frankly concede that the unrecognized 
ministry of women has been so well discharged as to merit 
acknowledgment. The question is now only as to the future 
scope of women’s work in the Church. 


316 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


It is extraordinary to find how practically universal is the 
admission that women are spiritually the equals of men. Here 
and there one meets an advocate of the older view that even in 
spiritual matters women are not the equals of the other sex; 
but this claim is now rarely made and is generally actually 
deprecated by those who oppose the admission of women to 
highest offices in the Church. But if men once recognize the 
spiritual equality of the sexes, the attempt to maintain subordi- 
nation of one to the other in actual practice, by exclusion of the 
subordinate sex from spiritual office, seems illogical. 

The great dynamic behind the Christian Church is now, as it 
has always been, the teaching of Christ himself. Slowly but 
surely, and often in the face of actual hostility from individual 
spokesmen of the Church, it moulds the conscience and the 
constitution of Christendom. Christ demanded the same moral 
standard from both sexes. He so far ignored the differences 
between them that it would be impossible (without the con- 
text) to discern whether he was addressing a man or a woman. 
Fle made but one appeal to all humanity, he offered but one 
standard—his own. In his eyes neither race nor class nor even 
sex was of fundamental importance in spiritual affairs. His 
Church has, in spite of innate conservatism, through the ages 
furthered the uplifting of the downtrodden and the liberation 
of the slave. It has with no less certainty elevated the position 
of women. But in this matter its work is not yet done. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


THE ADVANCE TOWARDS CHRISTIAN UNITY 


Is the disorganization of corporate Christianity permanent and irremediable? 
Can the broken unity of the Church ever be restored? The securest answer to 
these questions is given by facts. Enormous progress has been made already, 
progress that a century ago would have seemed impossible. It is in no spirit 
of reckless optimism that we can predict still more rapid progress in the 
years now at hand. 

ITHIN the last century the ends of the earth have 

been brought together by the improvement of facili- 

ties of travel and communication. ‘The barriers of 
time and space which once held men. apart have been lowered 
or removed by the inventions of science. To the conquest of the 
“salt, unplumbed, estranging sea”, and of the enormous distances 
of continental lands, by steamship and railroad, this generation 
has added the conquest of the air by airship, aeroplane, and 
radio. Noman can any longer live unto himself; no nation can 
dwell in monastic seclusion. All mankind is being bound up 
in one bundle of life, and the world is rapidly being gathered 
into a single neighborhood, 

But a more compact world is not necessarily a more united 
world. It may be questioned whether science, with all its 
achievements in drawing men together physically, has not thus 
far raised as many problems as it has solved. As men of diverse 
races, traditions, and material interests are brought together 
within a narrower compass, the strains incident to human asso- 
ciation and the dangers of the violent disruption of society are 
increased. The more congested the community and the more 
intimate the association of those who dwell within it, the more 
difficult it is to maintain harmony, and the more disastrous are 


the effects of conflict. If men are to master the fine art of living 
317 


318 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


together under these new conditions there must be acquired a 
new spiritual attitude on the part of man toward his neighbor, 
and a stronger bond of fellowship. 

Neither science nor any mechanical invention can furnish to 
society the tie which is needed to hold it together. You may 
band the continents with ribbons of steel and encircle the earth 
with invisible currents of electric energy, and yet leave men 
hopelessly apart in sympathy and understanding. Brotherhood 
is an attitude of mind and can be developed only by spiritual 
forces. The only permanent source of the spirit of human 
brotherhood is to be found in religion, because religion—his- 
torically speaking—has been the great unifying principle of 
society. “No change which is in progress in our times,” writes 
Benjamin Kidd, “as the result of the extending conception of 
society is more striking than that which is taking place in our 
estimate of the influences in the evolution of society of the in- 
tegrating conceptions of the human mind hitherto represented 
mainly in the great systems of religion, which are thus in the 
deepest sense rendering society organic.” If this is true of 
religion in general, it is pre-eminently true of Christianity, 
which is a gospel of social comradeship, of the brotherhood 
of man based upon the universal Fatherhood of God. It is of 
the nature of the Christian Church that it shall be a super- 
national body. The truth expressed by an unknown writer of 
the second century is applicable today: “What the soul is in the 
body, that are Christians in the world. For the soul holds the 
body together, and Christians hold the world together. This 
illustrious position has been assigned to them of God, which it 
were unlawful for them ever to forsake.” 

If the Church is the custodian of a gospel of fraternity of. 
which the world stands sorely in need, and of a dynamic which 
will make that gospel effective, the significance of the movement 
towards Christian unity can hardly be exaggerated. There is 
no greater service that the Church could render to this genera- 
tion than that of supplying an effective leadership in the enter- 
prise of establishing the spirit of fraternity among nations and 
in all human relations whatsoever. The Opportunity for such 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 319 


leadership is within reach. We may say that thoughtful men 
the world over are looking to the Christian Church to supply 
it. But obviously the Church itself must exemplify the spirit 
which it-seeks to inculcate if it is to effect such leadership. If 
the Church cannot obtain or maintain the spirit of brotherhood 
within its own ranks, how can it promote that spirit among 
conflicting races, or nations, or social factions within nations? 


I 


There is, and has always been, an inner unity of spirit among 
the individual disciples of Jesus Christ, not always or every- 
where apparent, it is true, but nevertheless real. There is a 
communion of the saints, which no external divisions can de- 
stroy, and an invisible Holy Catholic Church that transcends 
all temporal boundaries, its members knit together by a common 
origin, a common vital energy, and a common aim. However 
Christians may differ, all the churches share the desire to diffuse 
among men the spirit of Christ until it shall control all hearts, 
transform all human institutions, and redeem both the indi- 
vidual and society. How rich is the heritage of this community, 
how vigorous this impenetrating life, and how harmonious its 
fundamental purpose! 

There is a unity of Christian scholarship that ignores de- 
nominational lines and that, in the measure in which it dis- 
covers truth, sounds the same note. “The lovers of the truth 
are one.” ‘The Revised Bible in English, for example, as 
Philip Schaff pointed out, is a noble monument to a united 
Christian scholarship, representing as it does the co-operative 
labors, through fourteen years, of about one hundred British 
and American scholars—Anglicans, Independents, Presby- 
terians, Methodists, Baptists, Friends, and Unitarians. 

There is, moreover, a larger degree of doctrinal and devo- 
tional agreement than is commonly recognized. Differ as they 
may in formal creed and in theology, Christians are not far 
apart in their convictions as to what is essential to the Christian 
message. All worship the one Father in heaven, revealed 


320 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


through the same Lord, Jesus Christ, and pray together in the 
words taught them by their Master. In sacred song they unite 
hearts and voices in the great hymns of the Church Universal, 
by whomsoever they may have been written: whether it be 
“Jesus, Lover of my Soul”, by John Wesley the Methodist; or 
“Rock of Ages”, by Augustus Toplady the Calvinist; or “In 
the Cross of Christ I Glory”, by John Bowring the Unitarian; 
or “Lead, Kindly Light”, by John Henry Newman the Roman 
Catholic. 

Again, all approve the same types of conduct, and recognize 
as Christian the same qualities of character. No single Church 
has a monopoly of the fruits of the Spirit or pre-eminence in 
devotion to Jesus Christ. Christians are closer together in con- 
duct than in creed. 

But although there has been a large degree of spiritual unity 
among the followers of Christ, it has not expressed itself in a 
visible, organic form since very early in Christian history. At 
the beginning there was but one Church. In New Testament 
times, while there were brotherhoods or churches in many 
places, all Christians conceived themselves to be not simply 
members of a congregation at Philippi or Ephesus, but of the 
universal Christian Church, of which the Church in a par- 
ticular city was only a local manifestation. The earliest Chris- 
tians thought of their community as a family, and conversion 
marked their adoption into the household of faith. 

It is interesting and significant, in view of modern proposals 
for Christian reunion, to note what were the bonds that held the 
earliest disciples together within a single Church. What was 
the basis of Christian unity during the only period in history 
in which it has prevailed? 

It was not, certainly, similarity of temperament on the part of 
the early disciples of our Lord, for in this regard there were 
differences the most extreme. There was John the mystic, who 
speaks directly to the heart, and Paul the theologian and mis- 
sionary, and James the intensely practical moralist. Simon the 
zealot, an insurgent against the Roman government because of 
the imposition of taxes, and Matthew the publican, a collector 


Ee ee ee —_—_s ™ 





A conclave of bishops on Church Union 


NFERENCE, 1920, THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY PRESIDING 


~ 


) 


THE LAMBETH CO 





From the Painting by Anthony van Dyck 
THERHOLY (FAMILY 





THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 321 


of those taxes, were members of the same community of faith. 

Nor was it identity of doctrinal belief. The first disciples 
did not subscribe to a formal creed. There is more than one 
type of theology in the New Testament. “The Holy Spirit,” 
says Professor W. Hermann, “works synthetically, not analyti- 
cally, and the composition of the New Testament clearly shows 
this. If Christians seek unity by means of unalterable doctrine 
then they must give up the authority of the New Testament. For 
in the New Testament there is no unalterable doctrine which 
embraces the whole scheme of Christian thought. . . . It is 
no imperfection, it is rather an excellence, and thoroughly as it 
should be, that the Epistles of the New Testament are mes- 
sages for definite circumstances, and not contributions to a doc- 
trinal system which shall be valid to all eternity.” 

Nor was the unity of the early Church based upon uniformity 
in polity or modes of church organization and administration, 
since, as is generally agreed, all forms of polity that exist today, 
presbyterial, congregational, and episcopal, existed in germ in 
New Testament times. Similarity in forms of worship, more- 
over, was evidently not essential to unity; for side by side with 
the freest expression of religious devotion fragments of liturgy 
are found embedded in the inspired writings. 

The unity of the early Church was founded upon loyalty to 
the one Lord of the Church and on fidelity to the cause of his 
Kingdom. Each member bound to the Christ, they were bound 
to one another. Each conscious of the indwelling life of Christ, 
they were united in the enjoyment of a common experience. It 
was first of all a union of spirit and life, and this expressed 
itself in a formal and organic unity in work and worship. It 
was “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”, unity amid 
diversity, and compatible with the fullest liberty of develop- 
ment. There were “diversities of gifts but the same Spirit”, 
‘differences of administration but the same Lord”, “diversities 
of operations” but “the same God which worketh all in all”. 
As Dr. T. R. Glover writes, “Two things stand out when we 
study the character of early Christianity—its great complexity 
and variety, and its unity in the personality of Jesus of 


cya AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Nazareth.” It was a purely ideal unity, dependent upon the be- 
lief of Christians everywhere that their Lord meant to them to be 
one, and that love for him involved it. It was guarded by no 
ecclesiastical hierarchy; it knew no compulsion but that of the 
Spirit. In the pilgrimage of the Christian community through 
the centuries we have lost the precious secret of Christian unity 
possessed by the first disciples of our Lord, and it may be that 
we must retrace our steps to the place where we lost it to recover 
it again. 

The type of unity which characterized the early Church did 
not continue. The Church had hardly started upon its career 
before elements of division and dissent appeared. Forced to 
contend, on the one hand, with the consequences of a growing 
popularity which swept into it many who were imperfectly 
weaned from paganism and who brought with them their pagan 
ideas and ceremonies, and, on the other, with the current 
philosophies of the Graeco-Roman world and perversions of 
Christian teaching of which these were the source, the leaders 
of the Church felt impelled to secure an authoritative interpre- 
tation of truth which might serve as a test of orthodoxy and 
which they could oppose to these errors, particularly to Gnosti- 
cism, the most formidable of them. Increasing dependence was 
placed upon the elders and bishops of the Church who, as suc- 
cessors of the Apostles, were regarded as the spokesmen of the 
Spirit and declared to be the authoritative guardians of the 
true Gospel. So a mutual love and a sense of a common mission 
and allegiance was gradually displaced as the bond of unity by 
a dependence upon a rigid form of church government and 
authoritative councils of bishops. 

Several generations passed before the organized establish- 
ment of One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church made possible 
the promulgation of doctrinal standards as the basis of church 
fellowship. From that time forward unity was more and more 
secured by the simple method of excluding all who differed 
from the ruling majority, until the Church was formally united, 
indeed, but had ceased to be comprehensive. Orthodoxy was 
identified with submission to the councils, heresy with dissent. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION S25 


Thus the faith tended to lose its experimental, vital significance 
and to become intellectual assent to dogma, while the simple 
ordinances observed by the early Church developed into elab- 
orate ceremonies. Where moral suasion failed to secure ad- 
herence force was substituted, and individual liberty was 
sacrificed to authority. 

During the early centuries of Christian history dissent and 
defection from the dominant Church were constant on the part 
of successive bodies of believers who rebelled against what they 
thought to be its dogmatism and despotism. The most notable 
of these heretical movements during the first five centuries 
originated in differences of interpretation of the relation of the 
divine and the human in the person of Christ. Among the 
rejected doctrines may be mentioned that of the Arians, who 
maintained their separate identity for four hundred years. 
During this period also the Church was racked and torn by 
controversy with Eutychians, Apollinarians, Nestorians, Mo- 
nothelites, and Monophysites. These sects held among them 
almost every possible estimate of the person of Christ except 
that which was officially declared by the councils of the Church 
to be correct; the Nestorians and the Monophysites continue 
as separate churches in the East to our own day. Many of the 
occasions, too, for separation or withdrawal from the Church 
grew out of demands made by dissenting minorities for a stricter 
moral discipline, or for a more democratic church government, 
or for a return to what they deemed to be the ideals and prac- 
tices of the Apostles. Hippolytus, Felicissimus, Novatus, 
Donatus, and their followers maintained their principles at the 
cost of exile, imprisonment, or death. 

When the great schism occurred in the eleventh century— 
Pope Leo IX and the Patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople 
mutually excommunicating one another as heretical, and West 
and East dividing into Roman and Orthodox—neither of these 
branches of Catholicism could suppress interior disagreement 
and division. Catholicism and dissent have travelled side by 
side through the centuries. The beginning of the age of Cathol- 
icism marked the beginning of sectarianism through the 


324 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


reiterated protest of successive groups of Christians of whom 
it may be said in general that they resisted what they believed 
to be the drift of the leaders of the Church away from the doc- 
trines and spirit of Primitive Christianity. 

The Renascence and the Reformation not only awakened the 
minds of men to a new appreciation of their long-neglected 
heritage in art and literature, but roused them to claim afresh 
those spiritual rights and liberties which were the birthright 
of the early Church. The new learning stimulated the spirit 
of criticism; the new nationalism stirred the spirit of revolt; 
and access to the Scriptures in the vernacular and the rediscov- 
ery of the Gospel kindled again the embers of the apostolic 
faith in the hearts of thousands. It is not remarkable that 
‘the Reformation, with the proclamation of the spiritual com- 
petence of the individual soul and its right and power of a 
direct approach to God through Christ without the mediation 
of priest or saint or institution, should have shattered in pieces 
the formal unity of the Church. Released from the sway of an 
authoritative dogma, and free to interpret the Scriptures under 
the guidance of reason, it is not strange, furthermore, that as 
interpretations differed men formed new alignments and drew 
apart from one another in separate Christian communions. 
They rallied about strong leaders expressing varying concep- 
tions of Christian doctrine. 

The two great European movements, looking respectively to 
Luther and Zwingli as their founders, divided Protestantism 
into two branches, the Lutheran and the Reformed churches. 
Side by side with these were groups of a more radical sort, such 
as the Anabaptists, the Socinians, and the mystics. In England, 
the new leaven, working among a people of quite different 
tradition and temper, modified the Church of England and 
produced in course of time the communions that we know as 
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers. The 
Wesleyans, or Methodists, were the product of a later reforma- 
tion within the Reformed churches. All of these branches of 
Protestantism in course of time found a home in America, 
And in the United States, where the process of division has 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 325 


proceeded farthest, we may distinguish Protestant bodies, large 
and small, of almost one hundred and fifty varieties. 


II 


Thus was created, in its main outlines, the situation in which 
a divided Christendom finds itself in our own time. The bene- 
fits of religious freedom, won throughout the English-speaking 
world by immeasurable sacrifice and heroic struggle, are in- 
calculable. There is no imaginable gain that could now com- 
pensate for the loss of them. But every new movement suffers 
from the defects of its qualities and, measured by the Christian 
centuries, Protestantism is still young. There is no more urgent 
task confronting Christendom today than that of discovering 
a remedy for the defects of Protestantism without the sacrifice 
of the values. 

It must surely be admitted that its individualism, which is 
the source of the strength of Protestantism, has entailed disabili- 
ties which are a source of weakness. Its record is not free from 
the vagaries and excesses that spring from the exercise of an 
unbalanced or uneducated private judgment, dissension between 
religious factions, persecutions and martyrdoms, or the impo- 
sition of civil penalties upon religious minorities. The failure 
to take counsel together and to co-operate in the great tasks 
of the Kingdom of God has often hampered the efficiency 
of Protestantism, and both by the duplication of institutions 
and agencies, particularly in frontier and rural communities, 
and by the failure to enter needy fields, its resources have suf: 
fered waste or its opportunties of service have been curtailed. 
The trumpet has often given an uncertain sound because of 
divided counsels, when it has summoned the Protestant army 
to war against entrenched evils in political, social, and indus- 
trial life. The influence of the Church in great moral issues 
has often been impaired, or even nullified, because it could not 
speak with a united voice. And the introduction of distinctive 
denominational principles into missionary lands, where the his- 
toric causes in which they originated are without significance, 


326 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


has weakened the influence of Christianity upon non-Christian 
peoples by the division of its forces. There is also a limitation 
of Christian fellowship in the pursuit of truth. Each of the 
various elements of temperament, tradition, and spiritual ex- 
perience within the Christian commonwealth has a contribu- 
tion to make, and each contribution is partial; for as Paul long 
ago declared, the breadth and length and depth and height of 
the love of Christ can only be comprehended “with all the 
saints”. 

It is from such difficulties and disabilities that there arises 
the danger of a decline of that leadership, in the diffusion of 
the spirit of brotherhood in all human relations and among all 
races and nations, which requires for its full efficiency that the 
Church shall itself incarnate that spirit and speak with the 
weight and power of a united testimony. 


III 


Among the most encouraging and hopeful signs of our time 
is the drawing together of the divisions of Christendom within 
a new spiritual fellowship. The tide has ebbed and flowed 
through the years, but every decade within the last century has 
witnessed a distinct advance. 

Even in the period of its bitterest contentions, the Church 
has not lacked for prophetic souls whose voices have been 
raised in the interest of brotherhood and unity. During the 
years immediately succeeding the Reformation earnest efforts 
were put forth by representatives of both sides of the contro- 
versy to heal the schism between the Protestants and Catholics, 
until the codification of Catholic doctrine and law in the Coun- 
cil of Trent seemed to dismiss the hope of any compromise 
or concession on the part of the Roman Church. Among early 
Protestant leaders Zwingli and Melanchthon were of a con- 
spicuously irenic spirit, and John Calvin, though of sterner 
stuff, wrote to Bishop Cranmer in England, “I should not 
hesitate to cross ten seas, if by this means holy communion 
might prevail among the members of Christ.” Later John 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION Sel 


Milton exerted his powerful influence in the interest of Chris- 
tian fraternity, and John Wesley the evangelist, Jeremy Taylor 
the preacher, and John Locke the philosopher, were, in turn, 
advocates of the same great cause. But meanwhile an aggres- 
sive sectarianism in practice was widening the breaches that 
kept the churches apart. 

As the lapse of time, however, has removed the sundered 
churches from the occasions out of which their differences 
arose, controversy has become more mild and the sharp edges 
of distinctive doctrines have been blurred, until, in our own 
day, in many instances, they have melted into one another. 
The phrase of Edward Miall, so scornfully gibbeted by Mat- 
thew Arnold, “the dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism 
of the Protestant religion”, is no longer descriptive. Irenics 
have gradually been substituted for polemics. We are emerg- 
ing into a kindlier day. The spectacle of the evils and losses 
of isolation or competition has evoked a determination on the 
part of Christians of different denominations to understand one 
another and to work together, and there has been awakened a 
desire for a more intimate spiritual unity—a desire so deep 
and widespread that its consummation, in one form or another, 
cannot be forever denied. Earnest men of every communion 
and in every land in increasing numbers are giving themselves 
whole-heartedly to a “ministry of reconciliation”. 

There are those, it must be admitted, to whom no organic 
form of union seems wise or possible. That fellowship of in- 
ward spirit which now exists in a large degree, and which by 
Wise measures may be increased, they believe to be all that is 
desirable. And they regard as natural and wholesome the ex- 
istence of separate, autonomous churches, each making its own 
particular contribution to the common life, and working side 
by side with others for the same great ends. 

While the existence of this body of definitely unfavorable 
opinion must be admitted, the company of Christians is a grow- 
ing one which is convinced that denominationalism, as we have 
known it, must be radically transformed or supplanted if 
Christendom is to meet the needs of our day. This conviction 


328 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


has resulted, during the last half-century, in two movements, 
one of which presses towards organic union and the other 
towards federal union. 

Those who favor organic union feel that it presents itself 
as the immediate and most urgent object of Christian aspira- 
tion and effort, and that for it there is no alternative. The 
sentiment of spiritual unity, in their view, requires some visible 
and organized expression, both for its own maintenance within 
the churches and for its propagation in secular avenues in the 
larger world of human relations. Federation they regard as 
a thing to be deprecated as tending to satisfy those who achieve 
it with an inferior good that may obscure God’s will for His 
Church. Only through the visible, organic union of all Chris- 
tians, they believe, can the prayer of the Lord of the Church, 
that his disciples might be one, be fulfilled. Further, they 
believe that if this is necessary it must be possible, and that 
if it is a part of the divine purpose it is inevitable. 

Those, on the other hand, who favor federative and co- 
operative union labor to perfect its forms so that participating 
communions, while maintaining their own autonomy may dele- 
gate certain responsibilities and powers in the common enter- 
prise of the Kingdom of God. Such present co-operation 
alone, they feel, can create the mutual sympathy, appreciation, 
and understanding that are needed to prepare the way for 
whatever more formal union may be possible or desirable in 
the future. 


IV 


Towards organic union initial steps have been taken in many 
parts of the world, and in some instances it has actually been 
achieved, both by separate branches of the same communion 
and by distinct denominations. A tendency widespread and 
growing may be illustrated from the history of a single denom- 
ination. The Old School and New School Presbyterians united 
fifty years ago, as did also four divisions of Presbyterians in 
Canada and the Presbyterian and United Presbyterian churches 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 329 


in England. In 1900 the United Free Church of Scotland was 
formed to include the Free and the United Presbyterian 
churches of that country, and almost simultaneously six Pres- 
byterian communions in Australia and two in New Zealand 
came harmoniously together. Recently in the United States 
Northern Baptists and Free Baptists have united; three of the 
separate Lutheran synods have formed the United Lutheran 
Church; and the General Conferences of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South have 
adopted a plan of unification and have submitted it to the 
ministry and the laity of their respective churches. 

From South Africa we hear of attempts of Baptists, Congre- 
gationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians to form a closer 
unioa; and from Australia similar efforts are reported on the 
part of the same denominations, though the prospect of suc- 
cess in this instance appears to be remote. 

The most notable example of such union between distinct 
communions already achieved is that of the Presbyterian, 
Methodist, and Congregational churches of Canada. The plan 
for this merger was ratified by each of the three denominations 
in 1924, and legislation was at once initiated to bring it into 
being. The course of twenty years of discussion, negotiation, 
and successive proposals for the solution of the intricate prob- 
lems involved, both doctrinal and practical, is full of interest 
and instruction to the advocates of the Organic union of 
Christendom. While the Anglican and Baptist communions 
found themselves unable to participate, and it appears to have 
involved the secession of a minority of the Presbyterians, the 
organization of the United Church of Canada is to be hailed 
as an extraordinary achievement, one full of promise and un- 
exampled in Christian history. Anticipating this union, co- 
operation between the churches had been practised for years 
in many communities, with a view to the maintenance in each 
case of a single Church of one of the participant denominations 
under the constitution proposed for the United Church, so that 
before the union was consummated there were already 1,245 
congregations of this character, which had combined 3,700 


330 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


congregations of the old order. Thus great material and 
spiritual resources have been released for active ministration 
elsewhere, and scores of pastors have been made available for 
service in other places. 

It is when we survey the missionary field, however, that we 
see the most striking evidences of the new spirit of Christian 
unity. The noble ideal of the London Missionary Society, 
founded in 1795, and composed of Presbyterians, Independ- 
ents, and members of the Church of England, failed because 
it was too far in advance of its age. It declared its design 
to be “not to send Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or any form 
of church government (about which there may be differences of 
opinion among serious persons), but the glorious Gospel of 
the blessed God to the heathen, and that it shall be left (as it 
ought to be left) to the minds of the persons whom God may 
call to the fellowship of His Son from among them, to assume 
for themselves such forms of church government as to them 
shall appear most agreeable to the word of God.” Later, how- 
ever, as the missionary enterprise grew in extent, the Church 
of England and the Presbyterians withdrew to form missionary 
organizations of their own. 

But today, particularly where native leadership is being as- 
serted, the spirit of co-operative effort is coming in like a flood. 
There are more than a score of educational institutions in China 
alone under interdenominational control, including the five 
union colleges or universities in Peking, Nanking, Tsinan-fu, 
Cheng-tu, and Fuchow. The Christian colleges for women, 
such as those in Lucknow, Nanking, Peking, Madras, and 
Tokyo are illustrations of the same nature. Even in theological 
education union has not been found impossible, as, for example, 
in such seminaries and training schools as those in Bangalore, 
Seoul, Nanking, Canton, and Manila. The Severance Medical 
College and Hospital in Seoul, which is the center for almost 
all the missions in southern Korea, and the medical school for 
women at Vellore, in south India, jointly supported by twelve 
British and American missionary boards, are instances of the 
same spirit applied to medical work. To an increasing extent 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 331 


the area of missionary activity is being divided among the 
organizations at work within them in spheres of special respon- 
sibility, as in the Philippines and in portions of China, India, 
Korea, and Madagascar. Since the epoch-making World Mis- 
sionary Conference in Edinburgh, in 1910, rapid progress has 
also been’ made in providing comprehensive agencies in many 
lands for the promotion of missionary work, as, for example, 
in the National Christian Councils of China and Japan. 

The prospect, moreover, of the attainment of organic union 
is favorable among the missionary churches themselves. In 
south Fukien, Chinese Christians of Congregational, Presby- 
terian, and Reformed missions are already merged into a single 
Church. The South India United Church also, organized in 
1908, combines the missionaries and indigenous churches of 
the American and the British Congregationalists, the Reformed 
Church of America, and the United Free Church (Presby- 
terian) of Scotland. “The Indian Christian,” writes the 
Anglican Bishop of Madras, “wants a Church of his own. He 
wants to unite with his fellow-countrymen in worshipping 
Christ, without being fenced in here and warned off there by 
‘foreign’ differences which find no response in his own expe- 
rience.” In southern’ India encouraging progress has been 
made in negotiations between the Anglicans and the South 
India United Church, toward the ideal of a. union which shall 
include differing views, but in which none shall force the con- 
science of another. 

The need of union has been most clearly seen in China, and 
there the largest measure of it has been achieved. At a meeting 
of the National Christian Council at Shanghai, in 1922, dom- 
inated by Chinese leaders, the Chinese Christians in a notable 
statement declared their regret that they were “divided by the 
denominationalism which comes from the West”, and voiced 
their conviction that it “has been and is a source of confusion, 
bewilderment, and inefficiency.” They appealed “to all those 
who love the same Lord to follow his command and be united 
into one Church, catholic and indivisible, for the salvation of 
China”, and they called upon “missionaries and representatives 


g32 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


of the churches of the West, through self-sacrificial devotion to 
our Lord, to remove all the obstacles in order that Christ’s 
prayer for unity may be fulfilled in China.” 

Later a group of earnest Chinese Christian leaders gathered 
in Peking to prepare a communication to the missionary boards 
in America and Britain, expressing once more their heart-felt 
desire for a united Chinese Church. It was suggested that a 
suitable watchword for such an endeavor for unity would be 
this utterance from one of the members of the Shanghai Con- 
ference: ‘We agree to differ; we resolve to love.’ But one of 
the group suggested an addition which made of it a statement 
that might serve as the motto of all throughout the world who 
labor for the union of Christendom: “We agree to differ; we 
resolve to love; we unite to serve.” 

“We confidently hope,” says the manifesto of the Shanghai 
Conference, “that the Church of China thus united will be able 
to serve as an impetus to the speedy healing of the broken body 
of Christ in the West.” And it may well be that the movement 
toward unity in the home lands will be hastened by the con- 
tribution which the lands of the Orient are destined to make 
to it. 


Vv 


Nevertheless, we cannot be oblivious to the gravity of the 
obstacles that still hold Christians apart, grounded as are such 
obstacles in loyalties to institutions long pursuing separate ways; 
distinctions in doctrine associated in the minds of those who 
hold them with a belief in their divine authority; and dif- 
ferences, even more divisive, as to the nature of the Church 
itself. Such difficulties every definite plan for the reunion of 
Christendom has been compelled to meet, and it is evident that 
the churches, despite all the sentiment for Christian union that 
Prevails so widely, must yet travel far to find common ground 
upon which to build a new Christian temple, so broad and 
inclusive that all Christians may worship God in it together. 

The most famous plan ever advanced for the visible reunion 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 333 


of the whole body of Christ on earth is the so-called Chicago- 
Lambeth proposals, or Quadrilateral. It was first set forth 
by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, at 
Chicago, at its General Convention in 1886, and in 1888 was 
adopted and reissued with minor changes by the Conference of 
Bishops of the Anglican communion at Lambeth Palace. It 
reads as follows: 

“That, in the opinion of this Conference, the following 
Articles supply a basis on which approach may be by God’s 
blessing made toward Home Reunion: 

“(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
as ‘containing all things necessary to salvation’, and as being 
the rule and ultimate standard of Faith. 

‘“(b) The Apostles’ Creed as the baptismal symbol; and the 
Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith. 

“(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself,— 
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,—administered with un- 
failing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements 
ordained by him. 

“(d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the 
methods of its administration to the varying needs of the na- 
tions and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.” 

These proposals have called forth volumes of discussion, 
criticism, and interpretation. They have been the basis of 
innumerable conferences between representatives of the Angli- 
can communion and other Christian bodies in many parts of the 
world, over a series of years, notably between a committee ap- 
pointed by the Federal Council of the Evangelical Free 
Churches of England and a continuation committee of the 
Lambeth Conference, which have undoubtedly served to pro- 
mote mutual appreciation and a clear understanding of the 
nature of the obstacles which keep the churches apart. 

Upon the first of the four proposals there is general agree- 
ment, As to the second, it is questioned in some quarters why, if 
the Scriptures are admitted to be the rule and ultimate standard 
of faith, there is any need of another formula; and particular 
objection is raised to including one like the Nicene Creed, 


334 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


which bears so plainly the impress of the ancient controversies 
of the age out of which it sprang and, dealing only with 
theology, has no word to say of the Christian way of life. 

The discussion of the Quadrilateral has centered, for the most 
part, however, upon the last of its articles, the acceptance of 
the “historic episcopate”. If this involved merely a mode of 
church administration it would probably meet with little se- 
rious objection. Even those attached to a more democratic 
polity would prefer hierarchy to anarchy. But in the minds of 
those who advance the proposal it is associated with the dogma 
of “apostolic succession”, which makes the Church to depend 
upon a valid administration of the sacraments and this to rest, 
in turn, upon a theory of the Church and its ministry which a 
large part of Protestantism rejects. It is evident that the most 
formidable barrier to Christian union does not run vertically 
between denominations, but horizontally through many com- 
munions. 

There are those in more than one communion who find their 
approach to God through a Church founded, as they believe, 
by Jesus Christ and authorized by him to exercise its functions 
on his behalf for the benefit of the entire Kingdom. To such, 


the validity of the orders of the ministry and its authority to’ 


administer the sacraments depends upon the perpetuation in 
the Church of the commission given by Christ to the Apostles 
and transmitted by them to the first bishops of the Church, and 
thence in succession through an unbroken chain of bishops, 
by the laying on of hands, to the present day. The bishops, ac- 
cording to this conception, to whom have come the full author- 
ity and ministry of the word and sacraments, have sole authority 
to ordain the other ministers. 

On the other hand, there are multitudes of Christians, com- 
posing in some instances entire denominations, who find their 
approach to God directly, without the necessary mediation 
of Church or bishop. The Church, whether believed to be 
directly founded by Christ or not, is to these “simply the vol- 
untary association for mutual help and service of the world by 
those who have been saved”, They lay an emphasis upon the 


a 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 335 


Gospel and not upon the Church, and it is there they find their 
authority. Ordination is the formal recognition on the part 
of a company of believers that the candidate has been called 
of God to preach the Gospel, and authorizes him to perform 
his ministry within the constituency for which the ordaining 
body speaks. It is conceived as in no sense conferring grace, 
but merely as the recognition of a gift already bestowed by God. 

These apparently incompatible views of the Church and the 
ministry constitute the crux of the proposal of Christian union 
on the basis of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. The con- 
tinued and kindly discussion of the years has not appreciably 
brought together the extremes of these positions. The suspicion 
has persisted that the re-ordination at the hands of a bishop of 
the Anglican or Episcopal churches, which this proposal would 
require, would discredit the credentials of other churches or of 
their ministry, even though they should possess abundant evi- 
dence of the blessing of God upon their labors. 

In the course of the discussion the attitude of the bishops 
of the Lambeth Conference has been most conciliative. A 
memorandum of the Church of England, issued in 1923, de- 
clared that, “Ministries which imply a sincere intention to 
preach Christ’s Word and administer the Sacraments as Christ 
has ordained, and to which authority so to do has been solemnly 
given by the Church concerned, are real ministries of Christ’s 
Word and Sacraments in the Universal Church.” In an “Ap- 
peal to All Christian People”, issued by the bishops of the 
Lambeth Conference in 1920, they declared: “If the author- 
ities of other Communions should so desire . . . terms of 
union having been otherwise satisfactorily adjusted, Bishops 
and clergy of our Communion would willingly accept from 
these authorities a form of commission or recognition which 
would commend our ministry to their congregations.” And 
they continued: “It is our hope that the same motive would 
lead ministers who have not received it to accept a commission 
through episcopal ordination, as obtaining for them a ministry 
throughout the whole fellowship.” 

Such an exchange of commissions or ordinations as suggested 


336 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


by this statement was definitely proposed in the United States 
in the so-called Concordat in 1919, signed by ten leaders of 
the Congregational and Protestant Episcopal churches, and it 
received favorable consideration at the meeting of the General 
Convention of the latter Church in the following year; but 
the proposal has not as yet been put into effect, nor has the 
suggestion of such an arrangement been received with wide 
favor by other bodies of Christians. The fact that the non- 
episcopal churches already recognize the ministry of the An- 
glican communion to be as valid as their own seems to them, 
in general, to make such additional “commission or recogni- 
tion” unnecessary; and they remain reluctant to admit the need 
or the advisability of any sort of re-ordination, supplementary 
ordination, or joint ordination. This reluctance is of as con- 
scientious a nature as is the conviction of those who advance the 
proposal and deem it to be essential; and these diverse concep- 
tions of the nature and function of the Church constitute per- 
haps the most serious obstacle with which the cause of organic 
church union must contend. 

Where differences of so fundamental a nature do not pre- 
vail, however, union based upon a mutual recognition of the 
validity of ministerial orders is already possible. On such a 
basis negotiations are pending by which the six million 
members of the Swedish Lutheran Church may come into 
fellowship with the millions of the Anglican Church. As a 
consequence, two Anglican bishops have already participated 
in the ordination of two bishops of the Swedish communion, 
Since the Patriarchate and Holy Synod of Constantinople, in 
1922, recognized the validity of Anglican orders, such an inter- 
change of ordaining bishops is now possible also between the 
Fastern Orthodox and Anglican churches. Thus three great 
churches have come into close affiliation with one another upon 
a basis in accord with the Lambeth Quadrilateral. 

The prospect of the discovery of any common ground upon 
which the Roman Catholic Church may stand with other bodies 
of Christians seems to be as remote as ever, There is no ec- 
clesiastical fellowship between the Roman Catholic and the 


— 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 337 


Eastern Orthodox churches. “It might seem,” writes Arch- 
bishop Platon, of the Greek Church, “that no Church is closer 
to the Orthodox than is the Roman Catholic. Chief among its 
resemblances, the two have the same number of sacraments; yet 
the distance between them is so great as to terrify us; it is 
almost immeasurable.” 

Some years ago Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, stated in 
specific terms what has been the consistent attitude of the 
Papacy toward Protestantism. ‘The reunion of the scattered 
branches of Christendom,” he said, “is a consummation de- 
voutly to be wished, and I would gladly sacrifice the remaining 
years of my life in lending a helping hand toward this blessed 
result.” But he proceeded to affirm: ‘The first essential re- 
quirement is the recognition of the Sovereign Pontiff, who as 
_ the successor of St. Peter is the divinely appointed head of 
Christendom.” Bishop Bonomelli, of the Roman Catholic 
Diocese of Cremona, has more recently declared: “To feel the 
necessity, and to seek the ways, of gathering together the scat- 
tered members of Christ is a surpassingly noble and beautiful 
aim, and worthy to be studied and translated into action with 
all zeal; and it is very consoling to see how our Protestant 
brothers are striving for this end with evident sincerity and 
thorough good will. I cannot, however, shut my eyes to the very 
grave difficulty of the enterprise—first of all, the situation of 
the Roman Church, which cannot recede from its position or 
yield upon any essential point of its doctrine without being 
renegade to itself. The Roman Church, with its definitions, 
with the affirmations repeated a thousand times of its divine 
character, and with all the acts of its government, has cut down 
and is cutting down every bridge behind it. It can well allow 
itself to be joined by the dissident churches with unconditional 
submission; but it cannot turn back, review its own decisions, 
modify its dogmas, change its hierarchy, lessen its authority. 

. . And in this, I believe, consists the greatest obstacle to 
that unity the need of which is so deeply felt.” 

Thus the further progress of the movement towards the or- 
ganic union of Christendom appears now to wait upon a better 


338 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


understanding between the various Christian bodies and a 
clearer definition of what is essential and what non-essential to 
unity in work and worship. It is this that gives significance to 
the project of holding in the near future a World Conference 
on Faith and Order in which the churches may freely exchange 
their views. Plans for this conference were set in motion at the 
General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
1910, when an invitation was extended to all Christian com- 
munions throughout the world “which confess our Lord Jesus 
Christ as God and Savior” to unite in the arrangement and 
conduct of it. The co-operation of nearly every Trinitarian 
communion, except the Roman Catholic, is assured, and most 
have appointed commissions to represent them. The refusal of 
the pope, while couched in friendly terms, was none the less 
rigid and uncompromising in the attitude that, as the teaching 
and practice of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to the 
visible unity of the Church was well known to everybody, it 
would not be possible for it to take part in such a conference. 

In the preparation of this notable conference a voluminous 
literature has been produced, groups of Christians have met 
in council in many lands, and there has been an exchange of 
visitations on the part of Christian leaders of Europe and 
America which have been of incalculable service to the spirit 
of Christian unity. There assembled in Geneva, in 1920, rep- 
resentatives of seventy-eight communions from forty nations for 
consideration of the conduct of the conference, and a series of 
topics was suggested for study and discussion throughout the 
world. Among them were such as will suggest the range of 
interests with which the promoters of the conference are con- 
cerned: the degree of unity in faith necessary for reunion, and 
whether a creed is necessary, and if so what should be used ; 
the degree of unity in the matter of order necessary for reunion, 
whether there should be a common ministry universally recog- 
nized, and if so of what order or kinds this ministry should 
consist; and whether the reunited Church will require as neces- 
sary any conditions precedent to ordination or any particular 
manner of ordination, and if so what these ought to be. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 339 


This conference has been projected with such breadth of 
view and in so generous a spirit that all who pray for the 
peace of the Church will watch its deliberations with the deep- 
est interest and concern. A frank discussion of differences and 
agreements upon a common platform is certain to promote both 
sympathy and understanding among the communions that en- 
gage in it. Such a discussion may be expected so to define the 
elements which enter into the problem of union that they may 
be clearly understood and estimated. This will alone constitute 
a great step forward. 


VI 


It may be that the shortest road to organic union will be 
found by indirect approach, as the various communions are 
lifted to the high level upon which they can face together the 
clamant need of Christianizing industry and international re- 
lations in every land. In this mood the Universal Christian 
Conference on Life and Work met at Stockholm in the 
summer of 1925 to consider how the churches of the world 
could bring about a fuller application of the Christian Gos- 
pel to modern life. The Conference on Christian Politics, 
Economics, and Citizenship, held in Birmingham in 1924, had 
a similar purpose and was attended by delegates from many 
lands; but the Universal Conference at Stockholm drew upon 
a wider constituency and had a more ambitious aim. 

The larger Protestant denominations have achieved a world 
fellowship within the limits of their own ranks. Thus the Pres- 
byterians have their World Alliance of the Reformed Churches 
Holding the Presbyterian System, which has been meeting since 
1877, and the Baptists their Baptist World Alliance, organized 
in 1905. The Lutheran World Convention, which met in 1923, 
was a truly representative gathering from twenty-two nations. 
The Ecumenical Methodist Conference has held its sessions 
since 1881, and in 1921 there were represented the churches of 
the Methodist order in all parts of the world. Similarly the 
International Congregational Council, since 1891, has bound 


340 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


together the members of that communion, while the Conference 
of Bishops of the Anglican Communion, which has met at in- 
tervals since 1867 at Lambeth Palace, has drawn together the 
members of its own fellowship and has led the way, coura- 
geously and persistently, in the promotion of organic Christian 
union. All these great associations of the like-minded, though 
meeting apart from one another, have contributed to the build- 
ing of an international consciousness and have helped to lay the 
foundations of human fraternity. 

Federal councils of churches are now established in the 
United States, England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, 
Czechoslovakia, Australia, Japan, and China. These federa- 
tions not only unite the Christian forces for service within their 
own nations but exert an influence far beyond the boundaries 
of their own lands. They reach hands across national frontiers, 
and they furnish an agency through which contacts may readily 
be made between Christians of many countries by correspond- 
ence, the exchange of visitations, and the initiation of co- 
operation in international undertakings of interest to Protestant 
Christendom as a whole. To cite a significant example, the 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America insti- 
tuted, a few years ago, an inquiry as to the manner in which the 
American churches might be of service to the Protestant 
churches of Europe “in the reconstruction work made neces- 
sary through the effects of war, in the formation of new con- 
gregations, in the relief of needy churches, agencies, and 
individuals”. It was suggested that aid might be rendered in 
the development of training institutions for ministérs and 
social workers, in evangelistic work in different countries, by 
making it possible for theological students and clergymen to 
study outside their own countries by means of free scholarships, 
by investigating the needs of religious minorities in European 
countries with a view to rendering assistance, and by assisting, 
if it were desired, in arranging for a conference of the Euro- 
pean religious bodies to be held in Europe. The Swiss Prot- 
estant Federation, acting upon these suggestions from America, 
called a general conference of the European churches to meet 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 341 


in Denmark in 1922, officially styled “The International Church 
Congress for Investigating the Situation of Protestantism in 
Europe’—more briefly named, from the mission house in 
Copenhagen in which it met, the Bethesda Conference. This 
conference included representatives of thirty-seven church 
bodies from twenty-one European nations. Here for the first 
time in history the Evangelical churches of Europe were 
brought together in an official gathering representative of 
European Protestantism. Out of it came the Central Bureau 
for Relief of the Evangelical Churches of Europe, with head- 
quarters at Zurich, which is directing a concerted effort for 
the aid of a great and suffering constituency. The initiation of 
this movement is one more milestone on the road toward inter- 
denominational and international fellowship, and suggests the 
vital and fundamental basis upon which it must be built, the 
appealing motives of mutual sympathy, an impelling need, and 
a common task. 

The record of the co-operative activities of the churches in 
the promotion of international fraternity and good will would 
not be complete without the mention of the Church Peace 
Union, and particularly of the World Alliance for Interna- 
tional Friendship through the Churches. The first of these 
provides a programme in which both Protestants and Roman 
Catholics find it possible to unite. Founded, and endowed 
with two million dollars, by Andrew Carnegie in 1914, it has 
been active in the cause of international peace. The World 
Alliance was initiated by the Church Peace Union to bring 
the weight of all churches and Christians to bear upon the rela- 
tions of governments and peoples for the spread of the spirit of 
peace and good will and the substitution of arbitration for 
war, of friendship for suspicion and hatred, co-operation for 
ruinous competition, “and a spirit of service and sacrifice rather 
than of greed and gain in all transactions between nations”. 
National councils of the Alliance are established in practically 
every country of Europe and America. Its annual meetings 
have brought together leaders of the churches in many lands 
in the interest of its high ideals. The meeting of the Alliance 


342 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


at The Hague, immediately after the close of the World War, 
was the first occasion on which representative members of the 
churches of the “Central” and of the “Allied” countries met 
together in friendly intercourse with their brethren of the 
neutral peoples. 

The influence of many other organizations world-wide in their 
scope, and owing their origin and inspiration to the Christian 
Church, has been exercised continuously over a long period. 
The Young Men’s Christian Association, spread throughout the 
globe, has exercised a pervasive influence for Christian democ- 
racy and inter-racial fellowship. In it are gathered men of all 
Christian communions cemented by a common purpose. Its suc- 
cess in reaching the educated leadership in many lands has been 
conspicuous, and, without directly aiming to do so, it has 
fostered international friendship effectively by inspiring with 
Christian ideals those who are fitted to promote good will. 
Consider, for instance, how potent and far-reaching must be the 
effect of international athletic events which in South America, 
in the Far East, and elsewhere can bring together young men 
of many lands in friendly competition. Particularly in the 
Orient, where athletes from Japan, China, and the Philippine 
Islands have met together under Christian auspices, the results 
have been of inestimable worth. During the World War vast 
sums of money were raised by the affiliated Associations, espe- 
cially in the United States, and were expended to meet the 
needs of millions of young men bearing arms, and of other mil- 
lions confined in the prison camps of belligerent nations, both 
Allied and Central. 

The Young Women’s Christian Associations have performed 
a service of a like beneficent nature in weaving enduring bonds 
of international good will. A quarter of a century ago there 
was organized the World’s Young Women’s Christian Associa- 
tion in which national committees were affiliated. This has 
demonstrated that women of different nationalities, associated 
in a common cause, achieve a sense of fellowship which cannot 
be broken by differences of race, creed, or custom, as was wit- 
nessed by the fruitful meeting held in Switzerland in 1920 of 


a i 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 343 


women of various national Associations, English, French, Ger- 
man, Austrian, Japanese, American, and others. 

The World Christian Endeavor Union, too, for many years 
has bound together the young people of the churches in eighty- 
four affiliated organizations in as many lands. Its great world 
conventions, of which six have been held in widely scattered 
portions of the globe, from India to the United States, have 
brought together representatives of all communions and many 
nationalities and races upon a broadly Christian platform and 
programme. 

To these must be added the World Sunday School Associa- 
tion, which has attained a world-wide leadership, and which 
through its quadrennial conventions and its secretarial force 
in many lands has labored for the improvement of methods 
and materials in Christian education. The Salvation Army, 
after expanding from a local and provincial organization with 
remarkable rapidity, has become a potent international force for 
social and individual evangelization throughout the earth. 

The World’s Student Christian Federation, organized in 
1894, unites the students of Europe and America and of the 
Orient and the Occident, in more than two thousand associations 
with a combined membership of about a quarter of a million. 
Through its conferences held in many countries students have 
not only been enlisted and trained for Christian work within 
their own lands, but have been led out into forms of ubiqui- 
tous service, for the fellow-students abroad. During the World 
War the Bedetation ministered to the prisoners of all belli- 
gerents with remarkable devotion, the Friendship Fund of 
the men’s and women’s student movements in America alone 
raising almost four million dollars for this cause. Since that 
time the Federation has afforded relief to needy students in 
Europe and Asia Minor, furnishing food, clothing, books, 
housing, medical aid, opportunities for self-help, or help in 
repatriating more rAd a hundred thousand individuals in 
seventeen countries. ‘This is the spirit of brotherhood, ex- 
pressed in a very practical form, by those who are to Be the 
educated leaders in days to come. 


344 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Most potent of all the influences for international unity is 
the missionary enterprise of the churches, always a pioneer 
in the manifestation of a spirit that transcends the barriers of 
nationality, caste, and color. This has found, since 1920, a co- 
Operative agency in the International Missionary Council, in 
which sixteen national missionary organizations, covering the 
whole globe in their activities, meet for mutual consultation. 
Among the recorded objects of the Council js that of helping 
“to unite the Christian forces of the world in seeking justice 
in international and inter-racial relations”, thus laying the only 
foundation upon which brotherhood can be established. 

Such organizations as these are the instruments by which the 
Christian Church is spinning over all the world an invisible 
web of spiritual fellowship, whose radiating threads, vibrating 
to the heartbeat of humanity, must link together the diverse 
elements of race and nationality. 


VII 


It is scarcely likely that the unity of all Christians will ever 
be achieved upon a basis of identity of creedal formula or of 
identity of church organizations. It is hardly to be expected 
that, with all the differences of temperament, experience, and 
spiritual inheritance which distinguish the followers of Christ, 
all will ever interpret alike the concepts of the faith. Indeed 
the sacrifice of conscientious convictions would be too high 
a price to pay even for unity. But though the processes of the 
intellect divide, the impulses that rise from the affections and 
the will draw men together. Multitudes of Christian men in 
all communions are saying today, as John Wesley said in 1742, 
“Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thee? I ask no farther 
question. If it be, give me thy hand. For opinion or terms let 
us not destroy the work of God. Dost thou love and serve God? 
It is enough. I give thee the right hand of fellowship.” If 
we would find a bond sufficiently strong to hold all Christians 
together in a single fellowship we must seek it where the 
Christians of the first century found the secret of their unity: 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 345 


in a common allegiance to the one Lord of the Church and de- 
votion to the cause of his Kingdom on earth. 

The attainment of organic unity waits upon the growth of a 
deeper, broader, more catholic spirit in all the churches, and 
we have already a fund of experience sufficient to demonstrate 
that nothing will so powerfully promote such a spirit as co- 
Operation in practical tasks. Christian men will unite in a 
programme of service to humanity who are wide apart on ques- 
tions of doctrine and church polity. In proportion as they do 
so they will come to see more closely eye to eye in the matters 
with regard to which they are now in disagreement. Com- 
munions lacking the historic sense and perspective have much 
to learn from those which have maintained their continuity 
with the past; and these, in turn, may profit by association 
with those that have swung farthest from the traditional prac- 
tices of the Church in bygone ages. Mutual understanding 
and appreciation are the fruit of such association. 

The universal Church that shall some day gather into one 
fold all the Christians of the world will not, it is likely, be 
identical with any one of the churches now existing. Each 
of these has its serious limitations. No one of them is fitted 
to minister to every type of spiritual temperament and expe- 
rience. None fully represents its Lord. Yet each has its 
peculiar contribution to make to the enrichment of the Chris- 
tian heritage. The Church that is to come will be not only 
rich in the varied gifts of those who worship in it, but capacious 
enough to include within its fold the widest differences of re- 
ligious conviction and observance. Its doors will face to east 
and west and north and south, and will be ever open to all who 
profess the purpose of its Lord. 

The necessity of unity is the supreme challenge which, like 
a trumpet call, summons the disciples of the Christ in our mod- 
ern day. The world’s need of brotherhood, founded in faith 
in the divine Fatherhood and informed and guided by the 
spirit of Jesus Christ, the Elder Brother of the human race, 
furnishes an appeal to which the churches must respond or 
prove recreant to their allegiance to their Lord. Some day 


346 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the various Christian communions will be lifted over the ob- 
structions which now keep them apart, exalted by a burning, pas- 
sionate enthusiasm for Christ and humanity. They will find 
themselves one, though they could not make themselves so, 
as the separate pools on the seashore are merged in one another 
when the ocean tide comes in at the flood. 


BOOK VII 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION 


Looking back over the wide expanse of our civilization we 
may now endeavor to review the characteristics of Christianity 
as theory and as practice—as.a philosophy and as a way of life 
As a philosophy it represents the utmost to which the human 
mind can attain. As a way of life it sets before men the ultimate 
ideal of human conduct. 


) 


2 nes v i . . 


’ AIS 
- Mi 4 x Ba!» 
4) is 


AS) AYN TS 


ms 





CHAPTER XXVIII 


CHRISTIANITY AS A PHILOSOPHY OF 
CIVILIZATION 


Christianity alone can give to civilization an enduring character because the 
genius of this faith defies all discouragement. Rooted in a Person, it dignifies 
the value of personality ; expressed in a community, it asserts the worth of society. ~ 
An historical religion, it insists on the reality of all that belongs to history. 
A religion with supernatural claims, it finds the fulfilment of history in the 
eternal world. 

HILOSOPHY of civilization is a large and loose phrase 

which has led into astonishing aberrations three classes 

of persons who have attempted to expound it. In the 
first place, there have been philosophers—and_ occasionally 
theologians—who have imagined that a philosophy of civiliza- 
tion gives them indefinite permission to crush objective history 
into the forms of their subjective system. Their error obviously 
consists in forgetting that a philosophy of history must find its 
material in history, and that however profound a thinker’s com- 
mentary upon historical fact may be, his chief concern is to 
bring this fact into clearer light, not to obscure it by the 
splendor of his commentary. In the second place, there have 
been historians who have possessed an excellent knowledge of 
the data of history but a very imperfect understanding of the 
spirit of man which creates history. Their attempt at a world 
view of human society will in consequence be infected with the 
inadequacy of their premises. They will forget evil, though 
history is full of it, and rest the story of man upon sentimental 
optimism; or they will disregard aspiration, though history is 
illuminated by it, and deliver us to a mechanistic pessimism; 
or they will seize upon one of the half-truths which conceals 
the whole truth and make economic interest, or military power, 

349 


350 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


or the qualities of a race the key to a comprehension of the past 
and to a discernment of the future. Purposeful and creative 
life is not to be kept in any of these pockets, and the human 
spirit is forever disconcerting the men who mistake its partial 
expressions and transient phrases for its rich and essential 
wholeness. Finally, there are the precipitate souls, little dis- 
ciplined by either philosophy or history, who fancy that lec- 
turing men on what they ought to do, or declaiming to an age 
on what it ought to be, or painting pictures of an automatic 
beatitude which is soon to dawn upon the plains of time— 
that this constitutes a philosophy of history. It constitutes, 
_ tather, homiletics and mythology. 

What, then, is a philosophy of civilization, and what do we 
mean by saying that Christianity is or contains a body of prin- 
ciples and values demanded by such a philosophy? Whatever 
else philosophy may be, it is pre-eminently the study not of a 
partial aspect, but of the whole significance of a thing. Philoso- 
phy seeks the unity that underlies plurality, the real behind the 
apparent, the law and meaning beyond the happening, the 
central truth that makes all peripheral truths coherent and 
fully intelligible. A man may believe, if he wishes to hold an 
extravagant opinion, that in this tremendous search philosophy 
has generally and forlornly failed; but at all events that search 
is philosophy’s business, that purpose the reason of its dignity 
and value. 

A philosophy of civilization, then, will lead us to history, 
as the only means for our study of civilization; and to con- 
structive reflection upon the meaning and end of the historic 
process. Through the historical to the philosophical—the 
super-historical—losing sight of neither on the way, that is the 
method of a philosophy of history. And if we make this dif- 
ficult journey with any success at all we shall have gained 
something of an answer to many questions, but chiefly to these: 
What values and standards are revealed in history that will 
help us to understand what mankind as a whole is or should 
be? By what ends and purposes validated in history ought 
we to be guided in our corporate life, effort, and experiment? 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 351 


Hegel taught that history is the world spirit’s unceasing 
externalizing of itself in men and institutions. Karl Marx re- 
duced the strife of souls to a strife of classes and declared our 
customary ideals only devices of the bourgeois to enslave the 
proletariat. Nietzsche construed these same ideals as inven- 
tions of both bourgeois and proletariat to enslave the aristocrat. 
The French and British positivists held up to men, happily 
delivered from theology, the thrilling hope of indefinite 
progress. Schopenhauer despised this progress as one of the 
delusions that tempt us to insatiable desire and inevitable frus- 
tration, and proposed extinction as the one sure good for sense- 
lessly striving humanity. And Oswald Spengler, who scoffs 
at formulas and schools, asserts that civilizations grow and die 
as organisms do, and that neither science nor philosophy can 
change the fate that produces and destroys them. 

It would be useful to review the efforts of the thinkers who 
have travelled our road; it would be chastening also to reflect 
how many of them have lost their way. But we cannot linger 
over either the instruction or the warning of their example. 
We must leave these tempting names and systems, and come at 
once to the heart of our subject. 

History, in the first place, fully warrants this conclusion: 
That men live as though life were worth living; and upon this 
instinctive conviction civilization at last rests. 

Simple as this inference is, its importance is immense. For 
it implies that every philosophy that is sceptical or pessimistic 
in regard to the chief source of our vital powers and the loy- 
alties that feed them is to that extent a threat to civilization. 
It exposes the danger and debility of decadent sophistication. 
It is not merely a moral but an historical principle, that one 
who does not manfully accept life feebly accepts death. A 
philosophy of the weak is a philosophy of the lost. 

We observe, too, in history that civilized humanity is rest- 
less in the present and bent upon making the future different. 
Man is a creature driven from within. Sometimes he is driven 
to fighting and domination, again to study and reflection, yet 
again to efforts for liberty, for religion, for new institutions. 


352 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


But whatever the end may be, good or bad, the source of 
energy is always the same—his passion for impressing upon 
the world of things the stamp of his world of desires, ambitions, 
ideals, 

From this fact we seem justified in deducing: That civiliza- 
tion is man’s effort ‘to make his outer circumstance more fully 
correspond with his inner life; hence the inner life of an age 
will chiefly determine the qualities of its civilization. 

This reminds us of the momentous truth that all the visible 
proceeds from the invisible. Literatures, philosophies, insti- 
tutions are ideas embodied, with the idea always preceding 
the embodiment and never perfectly reproduced in it. Cam- 
paigns, migrations, pictures, Statues, cathedrals are results— 
and we see them; but human motives, ideals, aspirations are 
the causes—and we can never see them. ‘Alle Geschichte 
Geistesgeschichte ist”, is a true word of Harnack: “AII history 
is a history of the spirit.” 

We are still in the region of clearly warranted reasoning and 
quite in touch with history, our constant guide, when we add: 
That since the human spirit is subject to error and misleading, 
the first concern of civilization should be to safe-guard and 
perfect itself by the cleansing and fortifying of its creative 
source—the inner life of man. 

The question whether we can discover in history any values 
that should serve as a standard by which to guide the course 
of human society, finds a general answer here. Whatever de- 
velops and expands the total life of man is his true life, his 
inner life, and is so far a definite and permanent value and 
standard for our guidance. Not any one standard, of course, 
can exhaust our possibilities. Beauty of form and thought, for 
example, is one of the first contributions of ancient Greece— 
a great good and lasting value, certainly. But by the side 
of it were a lack of humaneness in the moral order and a de- 
ficiency in wisdom in the political order. In medieval Europe 
there were again beauty, color, imaginative splendor. But 
along with them went cruelty and intolerance, Among our- 
selves there is much charity but a defect of beauty; growing 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 353 


political control but decreasing freedom; intense development 
industrially but slackness spiritually. If civilization implies, 
as unquestionably it does, an effort to make outer circumstance 
correspond with inner life, no adequate and rounded civiliza- 
tion is possible without a proportionately perfect inner life. 
To aspire to the one demands first a concern for the other. 
Upon no other foundation can a philosophy of history accept- 
able to the human spirit possibly be established. 

Pressing our inquiry still further, we seem to be abundantly 
supported by history in holding: That no political system, not 
even democracy, can of itself insure and preserve a civilization 
that at all meets our aspirations; that only a society consisting of 
the largest possible number of developed persons can achieve 
the civilization that we desire. 

The last word of history, as it should be of philosophy, is 
person. The last word of tyranny, whether autocratic or demo- 
cratic tyranny, is the mass, a drilled, regimented anonymous 
mass. All government tends to suppress the person, because 
the perpetual temptation of government is power. On the other 
hand, a society of undeveloped human beings tends in the same 
direction, because the perpetual temptation of spiritually im- 
mature man is impulse or passion. The chief misfortunes of 
history have proceeded from these two sources—the despotism 
of cunning rulers and the despotism of passionate and intolerant 
factions. There is no hope for a civilization that shall strive 
for the highest values unless we can bring into existence a 
community of persons who will be equally vigilant against the 
tyranny that resides in the halls of State and the tyranny that 
forever lives in the fierce passions of the undisciplined heart. 

Passing now into the region of moral philosophy, but with 
historical data always in our hands for guidance, we come to 
this fairly obvious consideration: That the discipline which 
creates developed persons consists initially in a sense of right, 
a love of liberty, and a reverence for intelligence. 

This must indeed be obvious, for how else could personality 
arise? When, however, we speak of a sense of right we do not 
mean mere practices, observances, nor rigor in regimentation. 


354 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


These things have often, perhaps usually, gone hand in hand 
with the most deplorable blindness to the greater matters of 
the higher law, as they did in New Testament times. We mean 
honor and veracity, impartial justice, a clear eye for chivalry 
of the spirit, a faithful heart, an unpurchased mind and soul. 
And when we speak of liberty we mean jealous vigilance 
against State omnipotence in the political order, and a large 
trust in the law of freedom for human character in the spiritual 
order. Reverence for intelligence will demand that we shall 
learn the lessons of past experience as we add to it our new 
experience; that as we experiment socially we shall know the 
difference between the historical and the antiquated, so as to 
be guided by the one as we surrender the other; and that we 
control our ruinous impulse towards unregulated self-expres- 
sion by attention to the fair forms and purifying laws of reason. 

These are high requirements; there will be those who say 
impossible requirements. But let it be remembered that a 
philosophy of history does not describe the present nor even 
lecture to it. Its task is to make clear the values which the 
historic process is moving towards and the standards by which 
Progress is to be judged. If civilization is to advance at all, 
there would seem to be no other standards for it, nor any other 
safe-guards even for the preservation of what we have. 
Whether men accept or reject these values, is not the business 
of a philosophy of history to consider. It can only say that 
if men do accept them they may have confidence in the increas- 
ing nobleness of corporate life; and if they reject them they 
might as well make open confession that they are unworthy of 
that nobleness. 

The importance of these spiritual foundations of civilization 
may be seen from this further well-warranted conclusion: 
That since industrial civilization tends to mechanize man and 
populous democracies tend to stereotype him, the need is urgent 
for a systematic spiritual training and inspiration which will 
personalize him. 

The fundamental truth of a respectable philosophy will be 
that civilization must rest on persons—persons in the full sense 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 355 


of the word. But both in industry as we have it, and in political 
and social habits as we shall probably long continue to have 
them, there is a notorious tendency to confine and _ restrict 
personality, to fix it in a narrow routine of conformity. Unless 
there is some institution which, in balance to these tendencies, 
makes personality, character, spirit the great end of its en- 
deavor, what can we expect but an increasing weakness where 
we should find our central strength? 

Our final conclusion, based still on history, is this: That the 
individual person has an urge towards union with the whole 
world of persons; and that civilization should in some fashion 
explain and fulfil this desire, which in religious language is 
called love. 

Speculatively this is easy to see; practically it may perhaps 
be the most difficult of all problems. For it means bringing 
into some manner of union the one and the many, local and 
universal loyalties, widely different cultures, races, tempera- 
ments, and traditions. Sentimentality will be of no help to 
us here; on the contrary, it will be mischievous. For senti- 
mentality is always uncritical, unhistorical, and mechanical, 
never discerning, nor responsible, nor spiritual. It would 
ignore indelible variations and control intractable nature by 
formula and phrase. There exists for all men a destiny 
which makes them one family; and part of the richness of 
this destiny consists in the diverse contributions which the 
several members, helped by one another, may bring to the 
common life of the race. This is what is meant by the sense 
of unity felt in a world of diversified persons. But something 
more is meant. 

We cannot get the full significance of this sentiment of one- 
ness out of any mere herd-feeling that arises from biological 
kinship. As we cannot understand the individual man until 
biology is crowned with personality, so we are unable to com- 
prehend the brotherhood of all men until the ideals and values 
that constitute this brotherhood are secured in a spiritual ex- 
istence as objective as our own personality itself. Only thus can 
the feeling of fraternity pass from sentiment and temperament 


356 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


into a fundamental law and essential aim of life. If human 
unity does not root itself in universal life through our common 
participation in ideals which are not our fancy but our author- 
ity and destiny, then ours is the tragic fate of possessing souls 
though the universe which produced us has none. But since 
it would be somber delusion to think so, there can be no true 
philosophy of history which does not relate man to universal 
life and law, and from that sublime relation derive his unity 
and make rational his ideal of love. 

The final factor in history, then, should be the chief founda- 
tion of a philosophy of history, and this factor is not institu- 
tions but the creator of institutions, the human person. Just 
as religions may be most searchingly judged by the concep- 
tion they show of their ultimate reality, namely God, so states 
and civilizations may be most accurately appraised by their 
manner of dealing with their ultimate subject, namely man as 
person. 

With this key in our hand we turn now to Christianity. We 
shall not, of course, expect to find in Christian teaching theories 
of government nor speculations upon the forms of social struc- 
ture. If we found such things there we might at once dismiss 
Christianity from our minds as providing a real philosophy of 
civilization: for in that event it would be concerned merely 
with the transient and not the permanent elements of history; 
it would be a system of opportunism rather than of principle. 
But if we discover in this religion our most complete and noble 
teacher of the meaning of personality and our most profound 
instructor in the significance of a community of persons, then 
we shall have vindicated its claim to be the interpreter to men 
of the meaning of their earthly history and its worth. 

Even if it had no better claim Christianity would possess 
by default the office of supreme teacher of personality in the 
modern world. Physical science cannot aspire to this rank 
because the necessary object and method of the sciences confine 
them to processes and laws rather than to values and ideals; 
political and juristic science seems to be facing in quite another 
direction, and philosophy has almost surrendered its claim. 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 357 


It has largely abandoned its greatest tradition, which dates from 
Plato and Aristotle, to whom the supreme reality in the uni- 
verse was thought and mind. Many of the modern thinkers 
whose word has carried farthest have taught us that the cosmos, 
while splendid in magnitude and perfect in regularity, is still 
too paltry to embody a spirit that can answer ours; or, that if 
it has such a spirit, we are too paltry to be aware of it. That, 
in brief, is what materialism and agnosticism come to— 
although evolution is marvellously successful at its lowest it is 
desolately bankrupt at its highest. For, if the soul of man is 
the only isolated thing in the universe, transcendent in its aspi- 
rations but with no Transcendent to account for or satisfy it, 
then our highest powers are our worst delusions; and the human 
spirit, mysteriously luminous for a moment, finds in its ideals 
not the promise of day but a transient interruption of ever- 
lasting night. We cannot, with assurance, expect a philosophy 
of history from a teaching so insecure in the conviction of the 
supremacy of personality—a conviction without which history 
can never be understood, nor its ideals given due authority, 
nor its crimes corrected with adequate chastisement. 

If in this universe there were a final defeat for souls, the 
highest thing in the universe that we immediately know, then 
a philosophy of human history could never be more than a 
phrase. For, as philosophy means relating the part to the 
whole, if there is no whole to which the person of man can be 
related in fit and congenial kinship, where is the ground for 
the philosophy? The best we could then have would be prag- 
matic rules for making the best of an existence which in 
its totality is indifferent to all our efforts, and sweeps them, 
after our episode of fret and fever, into extinction. This is 
not, of course, to decry the earnest exhortations, so often heard, 
to make the best of the episode, pitifully isolated though it may 
be. But the name of “philosophy” we are bound to deny to 
them. 

Christianity, standing alone in the rigor and consistency of its 
teaching of the human person, is the most magnificent defiance 
that exists to the “weariness, senility, and loss of spiritual 


358 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


power” which Spengler declares threaten advanced civilization 
today. The human spirit, says Christianity, is not isolated in 
the universe. It is not an unaccountable product of something 
non-spiritual which is itself unaccountable. It is the creation 
of a supreme Spirit, and because of our likeness to that Spirit 
we know and are bound to serve the transcendent ideals 
of our nature, which are the Kingdom of God and the vocation 
of man—truth for the mind, right for the conscience, love and 
beauty for the heart. Thus we are given ideals for which 
alone the human person can fitly live; and these ideals are given 
an objective existence which alone can link them to a rational 
universe and confer upon them the authority of a final purpose. 

And thus we arrive at the following affirmation of the mean- 
ing of life and history: 

Since the individual is the final unit of humanity the King- 
dom of God must begin within; since the individual is one in 
nature with others of his kind in a social and historic whole 
the Kingdom of God must be extended without; and since the 
individual is related to the principle of totality in the universe 
the Kingdom of God must be completed above. 

In some such terms as these, perhaps, might be expressed 
the substance of what we mean when we say that Christianity 
is our noblest philosophy of history. In the light of it, history 
is seen to be not merely a happening, but a happening under 
adequate law; not merely a process, but a process toward a 
goal. At last the personality which was lost when made a 
function of mechanism is saved by being made a concrete 
purpose of a transcendent Spirit. And history, which can be- 
come a true science only when its subject,-man, is made a 
true person, acquires a standard and a method fit for that sub- 
ject and his experience. 

To make personality the key also to the meaning of time 
might conceivably result in an irrational optimism and an enor- 
mous egoism. There have been religious vagaries that have 
done and are doing precisely this. The characteristic mark of 
them is the ignoring of responsibility and transgression. They 
have a feeble understanding of moral experience and hence no 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 359 


profound or authoritative word in the presence of the wrongs 
of history. True Christianity is saved from this sentimentality 
because of its doctrine of sin. The symbol of Christianity is 
the cross, forever to remind us of the malignity of wrong, and 
of the costliness and glory of the victory which is won over 
wrong by the divinity of right. In this sense at least history 
is a process of redemption. From two evils of the historic 
order, we have said, man is to be redeemed if his history is to 
have a moral meaning—the evils of outer and of inner tyranny. 
Both degrade the human person. But our view of this degra- 
dation will be lax if our view of the person is low. Hence we 
come to the following propositions which constitute a further 
contribution of Christianity to a philosophy of history. 

1. The deepest basis of liberty is not laws and institutions 
but reverence for the worth of the human person. 

2. The essence of tyranny consists in ignoring this worth 
and denying the reverence that springs from it. 

3. As we cannot have a person at all unless we redeem man 
from a mechanism which has no soul, so we cannot have a 
person perfected unless we redeem man from the inner and 
outer servitude which profanes a soul. Wrong therefore calls 
for retribution from that same universe of spirit in which man 
finds fulfilment. History cannot move to a spiritual end unless 
the crimes of history are punished by the transcendent Spirit 
who constitutes that end. 

4. Thus liberty, as belonging to the dignity of souls, ad- 
vances into the divine order; crime is brought into the presence 
of the Vindicator of Right; and humanity’s historic struggle 
for perfection is neither an illusion nor an irrational restless- 
ness, but a progressive actualizing of the inexhaustible possi- 
bilities of spirit under the imperative of duty. 

Christianity might well ask what conception of the meaning 
of history equals this. Every materialistic theory forever fails 
by its inability to relate man as a spiritual person to a universal 
principle. But if man is not so related he is the single excep- 
tion to a universe of law. He cannot, however, be such an 
exception if it 7s a universe of law. And when related to a 


360 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


spiritual principle, as he must be, he and his history find a voca- 
tion, an authority, an incomparable inspiration and a worthy 
end. Biology passes into history with the person; and the 
person rises into the new ideal at the call of God, the objec- 
tive ground and reason of the ideal. A law fit for bodies 
guided the preparatory stages of the physical order. Now a 
law fit for souls shows the way to the Transcendent—and the 
most perfect expression of this law is the faith that comes from 
Christ. 

History, then, is the temporal stage of an eternal process, 
whose subject is man and whose object is God. As this is 
realized the mechanizing of man in industry or the stereotyping 
of him in democracies will become in principle, and progres- 
sively in act, impossible. Mechanized to a great extent we 
all must be if we are to exist in physical bodies and retain 
the industries that supply our physical needs. Stereotyped also 
we must in a measure be if we live in orderly societies. But 
once we understand the person as the supreme value of time 
and the center of worth and value that go beyond time, the 
mechanism will be relieved by humaneness and the stereotyping 
by a noble liberty. This will be accomplished mainly by a 
teaching that can give solid reasons. for considering man as 
supreme upon the earth; and this Christianity alone adequately 
provides. Happiness is the chief release from mechanism, 
chivalrous independence the greatest cure for fixity and monot- 
ony. Christianity, which at once illumines the highest faculties 
and the humblest duties, which leads man to lonely audience 
with the Most High and makes life an adventure in eternity, 
opens as no other hand can do the gates of elevating happiness 
and safe and responsible freedom. 

Humanity is a world of persons and a commonwealth of 
souls. As such it is to be raised into the Kingdom of God 
through the vocation of all men to serve and love eternal ideals 
and the eternal Spirit who manifests Himself through them. 
Because of this place in the infinite order, the world of persons 
gives sublime and awful meaning to our obligation to serve it. 
Each of us is bound in a twofold unity, first with God, secondly 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 361 


with all other men in the fellowship of personality, of which 
God is transcendent sovereign and immanent life. To grow in 
this double communion is virtue; to shatter either is sin. Who- 
ever therefore calls falsehood truth; whoever practices cruelty 
for profit; whoever makes injustice a step in his ambition ; 
whoever sacrifices conscience to party; whoever even tries to 
serve a good end by base means—does something more than an 
unpleasant personal act. He sins against the commonwealth 
of souls. He breaks the bond of unity in the spiritual fellow- 
ship of persons. He infects history by defiling the unseen 
sources which make history a transaction of spirit. In this 
manner true Christianity assures human fraternity and fitly 
condemns crimes against it, by seeing the spiritual above the 
biological and by relating history to the eternal consummations 
of temporal acts. 

Finally, there is this unique prerogative in Christianity as 
a philosophy of history, that it not only proposes to history the 
profoundest principles and the highest values, but shows these 
as perfectly embodied in an historical person. In Jesus of 
Nazareth we have history because he lived among us; and we 
have also the meaning of history, for in him we see incompa- 
rably that working of the central Spirit in the world of time 
which is history’s inmost significance. Supreme principle lived 
in a supreme person: this is the bestowal of the Christian 
religion upon men who would understand life and how to live 
it. It is the richest bestowal they could have. For philoso- 
phies may be paper programmes; exhortations may be words 
remote from life; speculation is haunted by the danger of end- 
ing in a paralysis of power. But one who has lived and died 
divinely, and shown in life as well as precept, to individuals 
and societies, the way that leads to a Transcendent, forever 
leaves a shining path to that perfection which is history’s end. 


CHAPTER XXIX 
CHRISTIANITY AS A WAY OF LIFE 


How does Christianity teach men to live? In love—Goa’s love for man, and 
man’s answering love for God. 


HE one soul among all the souls of men who was most 
aware of God gave to the world the Christian religion. 


It has, therefore, always been and now is the religion of 
God-consciousness. Its founder and his followers amid the 
circumstances of time and of things created have been dwellers 
with the Supreme, the Infinite, and the Eternal. It is their 
living of life in God which earlier and later has illuminated 
and commanded them all. Not by avenues of theological dogma 
but by the path of life have they attained to spiritual under- 
standing. 

With reasonings and philosophies touching the nature of 
God Jesus was never, and his greatest disciples have been but 
little, engaged. Paul indeed from the feet of Gamaliel carried 
into his apostleship a certain habit of rabbinical rationalizing 
which he exercised on various abstruse questions of theology. 
But of self-existent Deity he never adventured either analysis 
or definition. Mystical John also was bold to push his thought 
back to “the beginning”, when the Word was with God and was 
God. But even though thus disposed to interpret the immortal 
Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us”, John would 
but bespeak the ultimate Majesty; the supernal name of God 
he set unexplained about all his argument, leaving it without 
gloss or commentary to be apprehended in the universal lan- 
guage of the human spirit. So it is throughout the New Testa- 
ment—through all Scripture—God everywhere present, felt, 
known—nowhere scrutinized, investigated, or accounted for, 

362 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 363 


In all this the early preachers of the Gospel were but rev- 
erent disciples of their Master. For Jesus, though doubtless 
far more profound in that knowledge than any other who ever 
lived on this earth, never spoke a word on which could be 
founded a psychologist’s construction of a divine personality. 
He breathed no such speculative atmosphere nor withdrew to 
any philosophic by-roads to find the beginnings of religion. 
Jesus began with God—not even affirmed but gloriously as- 
sumed. To Jesus God was the axiom of the universe. He 
was but trusting himself to what he inwardly knew. He was 
conscious of God. And the marvel of his message to men— 
its divine audacity, its diviner pledge—was the good news that 
they also, if they would, might enjoy their lot and share in the 
same multi-potent intuition. 

The entrance gate of Christianity as a way of life is this 
exalting offer. Christianity is a way of living and walking 
with God. Thus to speak is indeed in these times to risk a 
breach with much that is called modern thought. The per- 
sistent fashion in many quarters is to describe Christianity 
merely as a religion of love to fellow-men. That when re- 
ceived in simplicity it is thus humanitarian in effect, every 
Christian must rejoice to acknowledge. But to say that in this 
lies the generic genius of Christ’s religion would be to proclaim 
an emaciated and starveling Gospel. Christianity loves and 
toils in behalf of men, but it is fully Christlike at the core 
only if it loves and toils for the same reason that Jesus did— 
because suffering, weak, and wicked men are all alike the chil- 
dren of God. The loftier challenge of God’s compassion, 
shared, reflected, and fulfilled by the servant of God, lifts the 
transactions of earthly charity to a cosmic plane—ranges them 
with the endless forces throughout the universe that do 
obeisance to the will of the Omnipotent. He who has saved a 
child for any cause and in any case has verily done a thing 
sublime. But he who has saved a child because he knows 
that it is not the will of God that one of these little ones should 
perish has done a divine thing—and numbered himself with 


364 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


the mighty retinue that attends the bringing in of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. 

Not by chance nor under any perfunctory ritual did Jesus 
put first what he named “the first and great commandment”. 
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” he quoted from the 
Hebrew Torah, “with all thy heart and with all thy soul and 
with all thy mind and with all thy strength.” As a child of the 
Law in a Jewish home and at the rabbi’s school hard by the 
Nazareth synagogue the Master had undoubtedly been taught 
to look up to this mountain-peak verse in Deuteronomy as the 
superlative landmark of his people’s faith. As son of God, out 
of the divine experience of his own soul, he verified and ratified 
its supreme significance. To many dull ears, no doubt, among 
the rabbi’s pupils and the synagogue’s worshippers the ancient 
formula, majestic as it was, bore only the sound of a spell for 
incantation or a shibboleth test of orthodoxy. But Jesus, boy 
and man, heard in the words the eternal music of reality—the 
sole reality that abides. To him the great name God was the 
self-evident synonym of the changeless, and around that “fixed 
stake” he drew the encompassing circle of his own religion. 
No other center, therefore, could he propose to those who asked 
from him the secret of religion. All human obligation and 
all human privilege and all human hope he saw comprehended 
within the holy wonder of love’s fellowship made possible be- 
tween the souls of the righteous in this present life of earth 
and the infinite author of all being, “on high forevermore”. 

Thus though Jesus appropriated words that the doctors of 
Mosaic Law in his time made great account of, he made them 
of vastly more momentous account than the doctors had ever 
perceived when propounding the second great commandment. 
On that early occasion in his ministry when the Master had 
astonished the multitude by teaching “with authority and not as 
the Scribes”, he pledged himself to his people that he would 
not destroy their Law but would fulfil it—or, as the Greek 
of the Gospel text more literally says, he would fill their Law 
full. And that promise he kept never quite so abundantly 
as through his interpretation of this familiar passage, by 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 365 


rabbinic rule enshrined in the phylacteries which the Phari- 
sees ostentatiously “made broad”. It was the meaning of it that 
Jesus made broad. He broadened “Thou shalt love” from an 
injunction laid on the pious to a franchise conferred on the 
aspiring, whether saints or sinners. He “filled it full” with an 
ideal spacious enough, when unfolded, to afford a life pro- 
gramme to the ablest of men, yet so simple in its daily guidance 
for living, loving, and serving that “wayfaring men, yea fools, 
shall not err therein”. And it was explicitly and of purpose 
that he offered this enriched Law as a “way of life”. Coupling 
the commandment which is “first of all’? with the “second like 
unto it”, Jesus lifted both together into the light of boundless 
horizons when he certified their spiritual sufficiency with one 
adequate sentence: “This do, and thou shalt live.” 

A characteristic stroke in the Lord’s enlargement of these 
vital words of the old Law is his application of the term “com- 
mandment”. In the time of Christ, as his conversation with 
the rich young ruler shows, casual allusion to the “command- 
ments” was understood to mean the Decalogue of Sinai. The 
period of law-worship and letter-perfection which ensued upon 
the ascendency of Ezra and Nehemiah in restored Jerusalem, 
after the Exile had, however, set the meticulous Scribes of 
that epoch to counting all the “shalls” and “shall nots” of the 
Pentateuch, with the result of discovering that they numbered 
exactly six hundred and thirteen. And although the school of 
Hillel protested, it was the majority opinion in this legal guild 
that the “heaviest” of these commandments were those which 
appointed sacrifices, feasts, ceremonials, and the separative 
rites and taboos that made the Israelites a peculiar people. 
These indeed were observances susceptible to the word of com- 
mand; men could be told to do and keep them, and their 
obedience, being external, could be observed, and if need be 
compelled. The Hillelites nonetheless continued to insist that 
“the weightier matters of the Law” were those that incul- 
cated godly virtues in the hidden man of the heart. And no 
doubt the bitterness against Jesus, which the Gospels contin- 
ually attribute to the dominant figures among the Scribes, was 


366 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


aggravated by their early discovery that this new, unlettered 
preacher, who had captured the imagination of the Galileans, 
preached what Hillel had taught—that God would have mercy 
rather than sacrifice. 

Something more radical than this, however, had severed him 
from the prevalent legalism of his day when he gave sanction 
to the judgment that “Thou shalt love” is the highest law of 
God. For not only is love inward and invisible; it is also im- 
possible to produce on demand even from an eager soul. Less 
than any other emotion of the human spirit is love amenable to 
edict or injunction. No man or woman loves because he or 
she is told to love—nor ceases from love when it is forbidden. 
How idle, then, to promulgate a commandment for loving and 
call that the supreme commandment! Yet in that very paradox 
is revealed the genius of Jesus. He came, as Paul so constantly 
and passionately reiterated, to release mankind from bondage 
to the Law, and “he sets the prisoner free” by pushing the 
commandment up to a height where it cannot be enforced— 
where it cannot compel and may only plead and invite. “The 
liberty of the glory of the children of God” is liberty to be 
drawn to God by God’s invitation instead of being driven in 
God’s path by God’s exactions. 

Without force as a legal imposition, Christ’s commandment 
of love is nevertheless potent and effectual. In truth, its power 
from the outset of the Christian era is history’s mightiest 
marvel. For if love cannot be demanded it may be evoked, and 
the one agent capable of evoking it is love. So Jesus knew. 
And before he spoke the great commandment he had spoken 
(better still, by his life he had expressed) the greatest fact: 
‘God so loved the world.” A noble reciprocity, therefore, per- 
vades the whole emphasis of Christ on the duty of loving God. 
The highway of man’s right relation to God is consecrated by 
God’s own footsteps long before man is even asked to heed 
its open summons. Before he invites, he comes; before he asks, 
he offers. It is a true echo from Jesus that we hear through 
John’s voice where in the latter pages of the New Testament 
we read: “We love because he first loved us.” And the heroic 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 367 


hours of men’s response to that “first love” from God dawned 
only after the cross of Jesus, visualizing God, had borne a 
witness forever unforgettable to “the breadth and length and 
height and depth” of love that “passeth knowledge”. It was 
with that cross in his view that Paul wrote: ‘The love of 
Christ constraineth us.” Under its mystic sway through the 
centuries labors, hardships, sacrifices, sufferings, sorrows, and 
martyrdoms have been embraced with joy where compulsion 
would have bred only rebellion; by its gentle might a spiritual 
commonwealth has been created and sustained where other- 
wise the anarchy of either bewilderment or despair would have 
engulfed intelligence and undermined civilization. Not only 
man but mankind is saved by love. 

Nor is the secret difficult to define which accounts for the 
force thus exposed in the achievements of divine love. Love is 
the binding tie of all fellowship. And the Kingdom of God 
which Jesus proclaimed is a kingdom of fellowship. Its co- 
hesion is the corporate share offered to men in the unfulfilled 
objects of God’s government. Partners with God must needs be 
moved by his sentiment, inspired with his enthusiasm, set 
tingling with his gladness in well-doing. By gratitude, devo- 
tion, and by the thrill of wondering admiration for the “bright 
designs” of their all-potent friend is the loyalty formed which 
God finds vital enough to qualify His accepted co-workers. 
Resigned sighs of ‘““This is what we ought to do” or “This is 
what is required of us” are insufficient replacements. Asa “way 
of life” Christianity moves on the high plane of thankful joy for 
the privilege of having, in company with God, a hand in bring- 
ing to pass the reign of righteousness and the victory of peace 
which this old earth needs so sorely. 

Some preachers like this “first commandment” as a text 
because it so readily divides itself into four heads of a con- 
ventional sermon plan. Drawing differences between “mind” 
and “heart”, between “soul” and “strength”, has afforded exer- 
cise to much subtlety. One suspects, however, that the Master 
bethought himself little of any such dissection of man’s quali- 
ties or man’s powers. Not an analyzing of the human soul into 


368 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY | 


its fragments, but the consolidation of its whole complement of 
faculties for a single dedication of the man entire to the unify- 
ing love of God, is obviously “the end of the commandment”. 
The thrust of the words is meant to drive home the necessity of 
one’s being all and utterly for the purposes of God, if one makes 
bold to be accounted a God-lover in any sense. As the second, 
the third, the fourth “all thy” are piled upon the first, the place 
for the half-hearted adherent in the scheme of positive religion 
grows narrower and narrower. 

Historically in the realization of the Gospel its fruitage has 
flourished or declined in proportion to the spiritual abandon 
with which the followers of Christ have pursued their highest 
aspirations. Men who did not stay to count the costs of utter 
devotion have always been heralds of a rising Church. And 
organized Christianity in any age may be more infallibly 
judged for its efficiency by this test than by any other: does it 
infect the minds of men with a furtive concern to discover and 
measure the least possible that will get them into heaven? Or 
does it endue them with a restless zeal to try the most that 
can be done to put heaven into this world? There for homilist 
or churchman stands a matter of genuine discrimination 
mightily more important to weigh than any merely verbal bal- 
ancings even from the sacred text of the New Testament. 
Disciples of the religion of the least possible are wholly missing 
the way of the first commandment, whereas disciples of the 
religion of the most possible are, as Jesus said of the questioning 
Scribe, “not far from the Kingdom of God”—and that irre- 
spective of the type of their churchmanship or even of entire 
dissociation from organized Christianity. 

Contemplating Christianity from the viewpoint of the first 
commandment of Christ as a way of life does not indeed offer 
Opportunity to speak much of the churches. From that view- 
point there is no need to decide between variant opinions of the 
Church’s nature or its instituted organisms. At the same time 
this paramount interest in “The Way”, as the Apostles called 
it, forbids the disparagement of forms of religion which may 
be dear to any who are walking in that way or even seeking 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 369 


for it. One should certainly not discount either the candor or 
the faith of those who believe that in certain rituals and hier- 
archies there are merits lodged without which Christianity 
would be spiritually impoverished. But these caveats are only 
reminders that the fountains of Christian assurance which sup- 
port personal religion in men and women of many different 
ecclesiastical connections are to be sought in springs deeper 
than the hands of church-framers can dig. The reality of 
religion to the individual believer depends not on a Church, 
either as to purity of doctrine, sublimity of worship, or regu- 
larity of forms. The sole criterion that counts in this private 
aspect of faith is the actuality of God-consciousness in the 
numan soul, whereunto the chief witness is Jesus Christ. If it 
were but a subjective reaction which the Christian experiences 
when he prays; when in despair or weakness he resorts to his 
God for hope, strength, and renewal; when from confession of 
sins he rises comforted and at peace or out of strenuous en- 
deavor to play a Christian part in the world draws an assured 
sense of divine approval—if all this were illusion, then no ex- 
ternal grandeur of prelatic pomp or crowd-fed fervor of pas- 
sionate zeal could avert a verdict of emptiness on the promises 
that Jesus left in trust to those who would believe on him after 
he had gone away. “Spirit with spirit can meet’”—or nothing 
that Jesus taught is worth acceptance. Except for an Infinite 
Life with whom finite souls can be in communion, Christianity 
vanishes because there is nothing in it to live by. 

What can certify to men, shrouded still in the veils of mor- 
tality, that these contacts with the Eternal are indeed real? 
Nothing but the experience of the human soul renewed in every 
age—testifying in every age that in its own slight tenement of 
clay it has entertained a heavenly guest. Did this fail, all 
would fail. Conceive that for one generation none who sought 
God had any sense of finding Him, to the peace and rest of the 
heart, then not all the biblical record or the later history of 
religion or the present existence of the churches could keep 
faith or piety alive in the earth. But although in every genera- 
tion since Christ that hazard has loomed before the Christian 


370 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


brotherhood, it has never been a peril, for the sure and 
simple reason that until this present day and hour an experience 
does continue to devout men and women which they are unwill- 
ing—yes, unable—to describe otherwise than as inner fellow- 
ship with God. Out of that experience great and small, in the 
churches and outside of them, draw not only convictions of 
irresistible moral obligations but (even better) constraining 
impulses to co-operate in divine Purposes, assurances of un- 
failing divine compassions, the peace of infrangible divine 
friendship. All these unite and culminate in a love to God 
which in literal truth does absorb the heart, soul, mind, and 
strength of countless thousands. And this is the material out of 
which in the loom of the centuries the Christian life of the 
world is woven. 

No, there will never be danger to beset religion from too 
great a reliance on the fact of Christian experience. God does 
speak to men and will speak; He will not fail his own Cause. 
The peril involved appears from quite the opposite quarter— 
among those who hear, but not with the naive grace of the 
heedful ear. Strange is the vanity of the human mind which 
so often refuses to accept at its simplest interpretation the voice 
speaking within and accounts for the message by setting it to 
the credit of invented idols, which better please their creators 
the more vague and formless they are. Rather than welcome 
a divine friend who “stands at the door and knocks”, specu- 
lative visionaries dissolve the mystic presence into etheric 
phrases as cold and empty as the stellar spaces. In substitution 
for the great companion that God was to our fathers, they 
would content the present day with foggy dreams of the world 
soul and the cosmic urge. But out of the clouds of all this 
vagary the earnest pilgrim in search of a city with foundations 
emerges understanding as never before why Jesus Christ ex- 
horted him to keep company on the road of faith with little 
children—and himself to be as one such. Whether the child 
does indeed from his birth trai] behind him heavenly mem- 
Ories all too soon forgotten, as Wordsworth thought, or whether 
his uncluttered mind then stands open to first-hand spiritual 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 371 


impressions which the complexities of later years exclude, it is 
certain that in these great concerns with God the little child is 
truly, as Wordsworth said, our “best philosopher”—because he 
trusts without philosophy. Every child on his knees saying his 
bedside prayer petitions also all his elders to take God as he 
takes God—as one who cannot be explained nor needs to be. 

Yet the neo-pantheism of today must not be spoken of wholly 
without sympathy. Even if it is truly described as the in- 
sufficient thinking of unthorough minds it all the more deserves 
brotherly consideration from any who have transcended its 
puzzled questionings. It may well become a high step on a 
ladder to truth still higher. Surely in this age of ever expand- 
ing science it is no mystery that pantheism should become the 
refuge of many whose misfortune it has been to confound divine 
personality with any sort of man-likeness in God. Though 
orthodox creeds have long declared that God has “neither body, 
parts, nor passions”, it is no doubt true that most of those who 
pray to him have pictured him in person, more or less dimly, 
as local to some single place in the universe. But when the 
universe enlarges to the proportions implied in an astronomer’s 
report of a star whose light has been photographed in this earth 
a million years after that flaming sun sped the ray into space, 
a localized habitation for the mind that rules it all becomes 
unthinkable. He to whose conception a person must needs be 
in a place has in this circumstance no other choice than to be a 
pantheist or an atheist. Let us be thankful for all who in that 
dilemma choose pantheism. 

Yet it is not pantheism that furnishes the guide-boards along 
the way of life to which Christianity directs us. A better guide 
has marked the life path that leads to—not away from—a per- 
sonal God. Again we follow Jesus and listen to his teaching. 
Again we note how total is his indifference to such problems as 
often nowadays occupy our modern psychological theology: 
the attempt to imagine the modes in which intelligence, emo- 
tion, and will pervade an infinite consciousness. Once more we 
find that Jesus never tried to analyze God. Instead, what a 
better thing he did! How completely adequate to all our 


372 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


human need! He described God. It is said that in a great 
church assembly there were some who believed that the defini- 
tion of God embodied in its confession of faith was given by 
divine inspiration, because when a member stood up to pray 
that his colleagues might have wisdom to express the greatness 
of the Holy One, these were the words of ascription that flowed 
from his lips: “infinite in being and_ perfection, immutable, 
immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most 
holy, most free, most absolute”—a sonorous procession of ma- 
jestic adjectives. But if such was the inspiration reserved for 
creed-makers in the day of their toil, let us give God praise for 
the pure inspiration that was on the lips of his only begotten 
Son. It would be ill were we required to feed our souls daily on 
those towering attributes. But the description of God which 
Jesus left us—it is the very bread of life whereof the spirit of 
man shall have sustenance forever. 

For Jesus spoke of God one sufficing word: “Father”. 
Having said, God is a spirit, and delivered the world from 
idolatry, he added, God is Father—my Father, your Father, 
our Father, and rescued mankind from unbelief’s otherwise in- 
evitable victory. For if the conception of God as potentate and 
pontiff might perhaps have sustained faith and inculcated fear 
in times when the social organization of humanity better ac- 
corded with roles of that description, it could not have sup- 
ported religion through the present age, when science and 
democracy alike battle against every proposition implying ar- 
bitrary relations between God and man. But not the most 
hostile criticism can point to arbitrariness in the doctrine of 
the Fatherhood of God. Fatherhood is for all time an im- 
pregnable ideal, attested by nature, exalted through experi- 
ence, and in religion consecrated by love and grace. It would 
have been a wonderful prescience in a wonderful prophet if 
by prescience alone Jesus had cast his Evangel in the mould of 
“Our Father who art in heaven”, giving it thus a character 
destined to be more congenial to each new century of the 
world’s advancing thought and knowledge. But of course it. 
was not an expedient of propaganda which Jesus devised. His 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION bYS 


Gospel took this form because so it was shaped by the basal 
reality of creation: God is a Father; men are His children; 
and His creatorship, His rulership, His judgeship, as well as 
His saviorhood, are all included in His Fatherhood. The 
family of God is the ultimate description of human society. 
And in these terms the religion of Christ is better understood 
among men as the world grows older simply because the evolu- 
tion of men’s thinking is ever in the direction of what from the 
beginning has been most real to God. 

But pursuing here the track of Christianity as a way of 
life, it behooves us to dwell less on the quality of this supremely 
constructive teaching of our Lord than upon its potencies in 
human action, individual and corporate. Any word of Jesus 
is finally to be measured by its consequences. In no adequate 
sense does Christian faith exist in any life unless the life, along 
with the principles it professes, has made room for all the 
active implications of the same. Followed thus to their end, 
either in logic or in living or in both, the consequences of the 
Fatherhood of God are so tremendous that the circuit of the 
skies can scarce encompass them. In the first place, there is 
to be attributed to this great truth, rightly apprehended and 
rightly used, the vital solution of that problem through which 
many men have lost sight of God as a person. For if God 
is a spirit, and His Fatherhood is most of all a Fatherhood 
of and over our spirits, then it is but the spirit of His Father- 
hood that we can be concerned to find. And what is that 
spirit of Fatherhood? What can it be but love? And where 
is love? Never elsewhere than in a living being. Sticks and 
stones do not love, neither does the “sum of existence” nor the 
“stream of tendency”, 

Besides all this, the Fatherhood of God fills the earth with 
solicitude. Men might well fear the wilderness dangers of a 
world in which they wandered orphans. But who traversing 
his loved Father’s cherished estate will dread even tangled and 
winding byways and shadowy thickets? Will not the owner 
have a mind always to the welfare of His sons and daughters? 
Once again the aspect of love recurs and love’s logic with it, but 


374 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


united now with the significance of forethought, intent, and 
will—added tokens of personality in the limitless God. He 
whose very governing aim in His use of this world is eloquently 
described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as the “bringing of 
many sons into glory” will not omit so to design the place 
of their habitation that it shall further His purpose. He will 
shape their surroundings to develop in them all that will make 
for that “glory”—whatever in His sight is most glorious. If 
hardships and griefs are mingled with comforts and delights 
in the environment where God places His children, it can 
only be because, in a broader view than earth affords, these 
harsher disciplines are seen to contribute to the manhood and 
womanhood which in heaven’s appraisement are richer than 
rubies. And even that harshness is fatherly. Who as a father 
will not send his boy to climb up the steepest and ruggedest road 
if that is the road that goes highest? So the heavenly Father 
has given men a world with many a rugged climb. And if 
there were no loftier spheres one might well ask, Why was 
mankind lifted to its present heights? 

It is not long since such observations as these, implying a 
designed world for men who have a purpose of God behind 
them, would have drawn from the haunts of evolutionary 
science unsmothered scoffing. The scoffing would not have 
required men of faith to apologize for their temerity; it is not 
necessary to secure the permission of science to affirm God’s 
Fatherhood. But it is pleasant to take here the privilege, as 
one has now the opportunity, of remarking that such a para- 
graph as the foregoing may be written today without the fear 
of encountering scorn. Evolution has not disappeared nor even 
retreated. But evolutionists have thought again on their 
dictum that a world evolved by natural forces cannot be the 
subject of creative design. The presumption exhibited in say- 
ing what cannot be done by any particular method of creation 
looks, on second survey, too much like the egotistical dogmatism 
for which science is accustomed to spurn the theologians. Not 
in the most exhaustive hypothesis of universal evolution can 
any man discover a good a priori reason for denying that a 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 375 


power capable of initiating evolution could be as readily ca- 
pable of forecasting even in primordial star-dust all the designs 
that the evolutionary process may be destined to fulfil. The 
one-time boast of the sceptic that evolution had destroyed the 
idea of a universe designed with a divine purpose dissolves, 
therefore, into the thinnest of evanescent vapors. And on the 
empiric side of the question the most stubbornly naturalistic 
scientists are today constrained to admit that, after all, evolu- 
tion is not roaming creation haphazard, crazily chancing any- 
thing, good and bad indifferently, but is in truth going 
somewhere, and that forward and upward. Whither? On that 
science is silent. But it listens with perhaps unwonted respect 
in these recent days while religion answers: The somewhither 
of all cosmic progress is still the unseen end of the eternal pur- 
pose of God. 

And to that we have the right by sanction of Jesus Christ to 
add that the purpose is necessarily a Father-purpose for a 
Father-watched world—watched not for judgment to punish 
its mistakes but watched in providence to bring to pass its 
loftiest good. The Father, said Jesus, gives good things to 
them that ask Him—and even to those that do not, for His 
fructifying rain He sends on the unjust and the just without 
distinction.: The Father feeds the birds of the heaven, and 
“much more” will he feed men whose needs He sees and whose 
prayers He listens to in their deepest secrecies. He clothes 
the lilies, and none of His children need be anxious in fear of 
not being clothed. The Father forgives men their trespasses. 
Freshly we are faced—and now from quite another side—with 
the glowing revelation of “love that will not let us go”, yet 
craves naught but our love in return. The very words “Our 
Father” flash forth the picture of a world full of love—be- 
getting love, preserving love, providing love, guiding love, 
comforting love, pitying love, pardoning love, redeeming love: 
a lavished wealth of understanding, counsel, companionship, 
regeneration—the free outpouring of life that men may live. 
How can it be conceivable that in the enjoyment and under 
the constant offer of such gifts some men will pass the heedless 


376 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


days away without even the effort to answer this unstinted 
fatherliness with a reverent sonship? Assuredly it is something 
far higher than a priggish conceit of being good himself which 
in the reflective man inspires a resolution, intenser than any 
other desire of his soul, that in his way of life he will never be 
found unresponsive, unfilial. Irreligion might be only insur- 
gency in a world that lay under a monarch; in a world that 
has a Father it is the waywardness of a child, 

The life of sonship is far from fulfilled towards “our Father 
in heaven” by deferential respect. It calls for a vastly more 
active role. The pride of many old-time families in successive 
generations that carry on the business founded by the head of 
the house has its prototype in the organization of divine enter- 
prise; it, too, is “handed down” from father to children. If 
creation and civilization could reverentially be placarded with 
the namé of the proprietary firm the great sign would read 
.“God and Sons”. God needs partners, and His partners He can 
find only in His family. It is not enough, then, that the filial 
son shall be sincere in reverence and clean from trespasses; he 
must also, to stand level with the expectations of his Father, 
be a worker in the Father’s works. The dignity of human life 
filed its highest possible claim when the Apostle wrote: “We 
are God’s fellow-workers.” There is no other aristocracy to 
compare with that. 

This co-operation is, moreover, invested with titanic respon- 
sibility by what has already been affirmed concerning the eter- 
nity and vastness of the purposes that God is stil] working 
out. It is not as though men were being sent hither and thither 
like repair mechanics to keep an old and half-worn machine in 
running order. God wants them rather as construction en- 
gineers on a moral cosmos still to be created. His farthest 
purpose—His culminating spiritual design—scarcely yet be- 
gins to rise from its deep-laid, far-reaching physical founda- 
tions. A cold spirit indeed is in the man who does not thrill 
to the tidings that on this work his Father awaits his help. The 
rally-music of a mighty summons ought to set his pulses to 
pounding, and his hands should be reaching eagerly for his 


THE STORY OF OUR CIVILIZATION 377 


tools of service. ‘Where can I be of use?” is the befitting cry 
that echoes all along the way of life which Christianity opens. 
He whose tongue utters no such cry is a sluggard and a shirker. 

A final consequence of the Fatherhood of God—the complet- 
ing consequence which fills in its perfect round—is the brother- 
hood of men. One Father, one family; one family, all brothers. 
There appear to be some who imagine that a proper inter- 
human relation of man with man can be successfully constituted 
by a mere agreed-on adjustment among classes and societies for 
social and civic peace, thus abstracting the peace ideal and its 
consummation from all religious connection. But not so easily 
is God bowed out of the world’s affairs. He has already dis- 
posed these matters not by temporary arrangements for a gen- 
eration or two, but “under the aspect of eternity”. In the 
beginning He set “‘the solitary in families”, and out of the cath- 
olic family of all His children He left not one “solitary” ex- 
cluded. And when all peoples are willing to accept that 
ordering of God as a reality, fixed, inevitable, sanctioned by 
the all-decisive fect of His own divine determination, then will 
come the solution of all turmoils in the earth which put at 
enmity those who not merely ought to be but are brothers. From 
the simplest primitive history of the race comes echoing down 
to this day the question wearisomely repeated still: “Am I my 
brother’s keeperr” It is the inveterate protest of pride and 
selfishness against the implications of the Father’s law of human 
unity. Yet the question even now is constantly fading to fainter 
accents in the atmosphere of a kindlier world in which the 
divine Fatherhood is every day more hospitably received into 
men’s thinking. Some day the rebellion of Cain’s sneer will 
be silent. 

So we come at length face to face with the second great com- 
mandment at the very point where by golden ties it is bound 
together with the first—a seal and proof that the circle of love 
as God sees it, the circle of true living as Christ marked it out, 
is complete. Love to God and love to men are inseparable 
identities. In a deeper sense than the Church has commonly 
interpreted, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”, is 


378 AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIANITY 


“like unto” its inspired companion word: “Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and 
with all thy mind and with all thy strength.” For this is more 
than saying what the ordinary commentator may be expected to 
point out—that the two commandments are not disagreeing; 
they may be kept in one life without contradiction. The “like- 
ness”’ goes deeper than that: the two loves enjoined are one love, 
and both commandments are obeyed through the same motive. 
The neighbor is loved because he is God’s man. And God is 
loved with all heart, soul, mind, and strength because He is the 
Father both of the neighbor and of self; He could not be loved 
with all a loyal man’s capabilities of devotion if He were small 
enough to be merely a private God. Into a soul living in day- 
by-day consciousness of the presence that is never withdrawn, 
and by that presence purified from the opaque dross of self-love, 
these two commandments like a great double star shine with 
a single ray, and apart from them no other cynosure is necessary 
to guide the feet of man or woman into the way of life that is 
Christianity. 


1803 


1804 


1806 


1807 


1811 


1813 


1814 


1815 


1816 


1817 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD 
A CHRONOLOGY 


President Jefferson purchases from Napoleon the western basin of the 
Mississippi, known as Louisiana, doubling the area of the United States 
of America and giving it control of the great central river systems of 
the continent. Great Britain recaptures the three colonies of Berbice, 
Demerara, and Essequibo, later consolidated as British Guiana. 


The Serbs, led by Karageorge, rise against the mis-government of the 
Turks. 


Aaron Burr organizes an expedition in Kentucky and ‘Tennessee, 
probably for the conquest of the Spanish colony of Mexico, but is 
arrested on the lower Mississippi. 


Taking to flight before the threatened invasion of Portugal by Napoleon, 
the prince regent, accompanied by the Queen, Donna Maria I, and the 
court, removes overseas to Brazil. Later, on the death of the queen, 
he rules at Rio de Janeiro as Dom John VI of the United Kingdom 
of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves, the only instance of a colony being 
established as the seat of government of its own mother country. 


Venezuela proclaims its independence of Spain, under the leadership of 
Bolivar, a native of Caracas. Paraguay declares itself independent of 
Spain. 


Australian colonists in New South Wales cross the Blue Mountains 
coastal range. The laying out of the town of Bathhurst marks the 
beginning of the occupation of the interior of the continent. The 
government of Buenos Aires declares all children subsequently born to 
slaves free. 


By an inconclusive treaty signed at Ghent, the United States of America, 
having absorbed a large part of the ocean carrying trade, and having 
become an interested and effective champion of neutral rights and un- 
restricted commerce, withdraws from a war with Great Britain brought 
on by causes chiefly due to Napoleon’s continental policy. The war is 


marked by the failure of the attempt to annex Canada to the American 
Union. 


The Congress of Vienna awards to Great Britain the Cape (South 
Africa), Ceylon, Malta, and the North Sea Island of Heligoland. 


Explorations by Lieutenant Oxley of the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers 
in New South Wales fail to disclose an inland sea. 


The combined revolutionary forces of Buenos Aires and Chile defeat the 
379 


380 


1818 


1819 


1820 


1821 


1822 


1823 


1824 


1825 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


Spaniards at Chacabuco. Serbia is granted autonomy under the 
suzerainty of the Sultan. The Portuguese surrender the French South 
American colony of Guiana. 


Bernadotte, one of Napoleon’s marshals, becomes King of Sweden as 
Charles XIV. Great Britain and the United States settle their 
American boundary as far west as the Rocky Mountains. The inde- 
pendence of Chile from Spain, previously proclaimed by the patriot 
leader Bernardo O’ Higgins, is secured by the battle of Maipo. 


Spain cedes its East and West Florida possessions to the United States 
of America. 


By the Missouri Compromise slavery is prohibited throughout the 
remaining portion of the Louisiana Purchase north of the main southern 
boundary of the new State of Missouri. 


A revival of nationalist feeling among the Greek people, and the Greek 
clergy of the Orthodox Church, takes shape in the growth of a powerful 
secret political society, known as the Hetairia, which agitates for a 
general revolt against the misrule of the Moslem Turks over their Chris- 
tian subject peoples. Greek leadership proves unacceptable to the 
Orthodox Rumanians, Bulgars, and Serbs. The Greeks of the Morea rise 
in insurrection alone and repulse the Ottoman troops sent against them. 
Peru, the center of Spanish power in South America, proclaims its in- 
dependence on the arrival from Chile of a fleet under Lord Cochrane, 
convoying Argentine troops under General San Martin. ‘The Spanish 
dependency of Guatemala declares its independence and is incorporated 
into the Mexican Empire. Colombia provides that slaves born after 
this date are to be liberated on attaining their eighteenth year. 


General Iturbide is elected emperor by the congress of Mexico. A 
revolution in Portugal having proclaimed a representative government, 
and Dom John VI in Brazil having decided to go to Lisbon with the 
deputies elected to frame a new constitution, the heir apparent, Dom 
Pedro, proclaims the independence of Brazil. He is made constitutional 
emperor as Pedro I. Ecuador secures its independence of Spain by 
the battle fought on Mount Pichincha under the leadership of Antonio 
de Sucré and joins the New Granada confederation. 


Mexico becomes a republic. The five divisions of Guatemala, having 
regained their autonomy as Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, 
and Costa Rica, combine to form the Republic of the United States of 
Central America. The Monroe Doctrine js promulgated. 


The first of three wars resulting in the extinction of Burmese inde- 
pendence is opened by British campaigns against Rangoon and the 

enasserim coast. Great Britain acquires the Straits Settlements 
(Singapore, Malacca, and Penang). 


Unable to put down the Greek revolt, Sultan Mahmud II calls to 
his aid the well organized military and naval forces of Mohammed 
Ali, governor of Egypt. The Morea is penetrated and the Greek 
cause faces defeat. Russia cedes to the United States of America all 
claims to lands on the Pacific coast south of the limits of Alaska. Upon 
the question proposed by the government of the Argentine provinces, 
whether to remain separate from that country, Upper Peru elects to 


1826 


1827 


1828 


1829 


1830 


1831 
1832 


1833 


1835 


1838 


1839 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 381 


become an independent nation and organizes as the Republic of Bolivia 
under a constitution prepared by Bolivar. 


Claiming to act as protector of the Orthodox Christians, Czar 
Nicholas I procures Turkish confirmation of the grant of autonomy to 
the Serbian and Rumanian principalities. Representatives from 
Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, meeting at Panama, before 
the tardy arrival of an invited delegate appointed by President John 
Quincy Adams, draft a provisional treaty of union, league, and con- 
federation. Assam is added to the British possessions in India. 


The Turkish success against the revolting Greeks is blocked by an offer 
of mediation from Russia and England, joined by France. The offer is 


rejected and a three-power fleet destroys the Ottoman fleet in the harbor 
of Navarino. 


The three-power intervention in behalf of Greece develops into a war 
between Russia and Turkey. The czar’s forces cross the Danube and 
in Asia advance from Tiflis to the upper Euphrates. Explorations of 
the river system of south-eastern Australia are made by expeditions under 
Charles Sturt and Thomas Mitchell. Uruguay, through the mediation 
of Great Britain, is declared a free and independent state, after a long 


struggle for dominion between Brazil and the revolutionary govern- 
ment of Buenos Aires. 


After two hard-fought campaigns in the Balkan region, the Russians 
take Adrianople and dictate a peace exacting gains on the Danube, the 
Black Sea and the Asian frontier. Other terms place the autonomous 
Serbian and Rumanian principalities virtually under a Russian pro- 
tectorate and foreshadow a similar status for Greece if granted less than 
full independence. Mexico decrees the abolition of slavery. 


Algiers capitulates to a French punitive expedition. France undertakes 
a restricted occupation of Algeria. The Republic of Ecuador withdraws 
from the New Granada confederation and proclaims its independence. 


Mexico proposes a Pan-American conference. 


Great Britain, France, and Russia agree in establishing Greece as an 


independent kingdom; they assign its boundaries and designate as its 
sovereign, Otto, a Bavarian prince. 


Great Britain abolishes slavery. As a reward for services in the Greek 
rebellion, Mohammed Ali demands the cession of southern Syria, and 
goes to war against the sultan to exact it. Mahmud II asks and 
receives the aid of Russia. With Nicholas I he enters into an 


offensive and defensive alliance which virtually establishes a Russian 
protectorate over Turkey. 


Texas, colonized by Americans, secedes from Mexico and wins 
independence. 


Mexico proposes a Pan-American conference. British sovereignty is 
established in North Borneo. 


Apprehensive of being involved in a general European war, the powers 
proceed to coerce Mohammed Ali, who has twice defeated the sultan 
and brought about Russian intervention. They confine Mohammed to 
his hereditary rule over Egypt, and make the security of the Ottoman 


382 


1840 


1842 


1843 
1844 


1845, 


1846 


1847 


1848 


1849 


1851 


1852 


1853 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


overlordship at Constantinople an affair of the powers in concert. The 
federal union of the five Central American states is dissolved. Mexico 
proposes a Pan-American conference. 


Upper and Lower Canada are joined by the Act of Union. Edward 
John Eyre explores the barren southerly seacoast of the Australian Bight 
from Spencer Gulf to King George Sound. Following demands made 
by the Chinese imperial commissioner in restriction of trade, the British 
government declares war on China and procures the cession of Hong- 
Kong. Mexico proposes a Pan-American conference. 


As a result of the British capture of Chinese ports, Canton, Amoy, 
Fu-chow, Ningpo, and Shanghai are by treaty declared open to foreign 
trade, and an indemnity is imposed. France annexes the Marquesas 
Islands. ‘The independence of the Argentine Republic is recognized 
by Spain. 


The Sind is annexed to the British possessions in India. 


Texas is annexed to the United States of America and admitted next 
year as a State. An expedition under F.W.L. Leichhardt reaches the 
northern coast of Australia overland from eastern river valleys and skirt- 
ing Carpentaria Bay. 


Spain recognizes the independence of Venezuela by the ‘Treaty of Madrid. 
Charles Sturt penetrates to the center of the Australian continent, his 
route lying mainly over stony desert. 


The Oregon country is added to the United States of America by treaty 
with Great Britain. Disputing the western boundary of Texas, the 
United States of America and the United States of Mexico enter upon a 
two years war, as a result of which California, Utah, and New Mexico 
are added to the territory of the American Union. 


The French protectorate over Algeria is made effective, after fifteen 
years of tribal resistance, by the surrender of the Emir, Abd-el-Kader. 


The Netherlands provide for the abolition of slavery in Java as from 
January 1, 1860. The provisional government in France decrees the 
immediate emancipation of slaves. A new federal constitution is adopted 
by the cantons of Switzerland, providing universal manhood suffrage 
and vesting executive power in a council of seven. 


Gold is discovered in California. Vancouver Island is proclaimed a 


British colony. The Punjab is annexed to the British possessions in 
India. 


Gold is discovered near Bathhurst, New South Wales, by E. Hargraves, 
a miner from California. 


Great Britain completes the conquest of Burma in the second Burmese 
war. New Zealand secures self-government. Slavery is abolished in 


the Republic of Colombia. 


After reiterated proposals to the British government to abandon all 
attempt at reforming the still corrupt Ottoman rule at Constantinople, 
and to enter instead on projects of partitioning the Turkish territories 
in Europe, Nicholas I serves an ultimatum on Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid, 
demanding recognition of the czar as protector of all Greek Christians 


1854 


1855 


1856 


1858 


1859 


1860 


1861 


1862 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 383 


on Ottoman soil. New Caledonia is annexed to France after the with- 
drawal of rival British claims. 


Commodore Perry, visiting Japan with ten American warships, procures 
a convention of amity. Attacked by Russia along the Danube, the 
Ottoman Empire signs a treaty with Great Britain and France. They 
counter-attack in the Crimea. Slavery is abolished in Venezuela. A 
manifesto issued at Ostend by James Buchanan, J. Y. Mason, and Pierre 
Soulé, three leading American diplomatic representatives abroad, 
declares that America should purchase, or if necessary wrest, Cuba from 
Spain. 


Alexander II succeeds to the Russian throne, a reformer of the legal 
and judicial system who allows the provinces self-governing assemblies 
(zemstvos). 


Making peace on the basis of the defeat of Russia in the Crimea, a 
general European congress at Paris reduces Russia, in its relations with 
Turkey, to a level with the other powers. It prohibits; and for fifteen 
years prevents, the maintenance of a Russian navy on the Black Sea. 
‘The treaty guarantees the independence and territorial integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire and the sovereign rights of the Mohammedan ruler 
over his Christian subjects. Oudh is annexed to the British possessions 
in India. A conference held at Santiago between representatives of 
Chile, Peru and Ecuador drafts a “continental treaty” expressing hostil- 
ity towards the United States of America. 


Russia takes possession of the Amur district of China. "Townsend 
Harris, first United States consul-general in Japan, concludes a treaty 
with the shogun dpening Yokohama to American trade. Following the 
Sepoy mutiny, the East India Company is extinguished, and the sov- 
ereignty of India is vested in the British crown. Gold is discovered in 
British Columbia. Portugal enacts the emancipation of slaves to take 


effect in 1878. 


The northern part of eastern Australia is separated from the original 
province of New South Wales under the name of Queensland. 


Russia obtains from China the cession of seven hundred miles of coast 
fronting the Sea of Japan, and plants in the southern-most portion a 
new commercial capital, Vladivostok. Russian military expeditions push 
south from Siberia into Central Asia. After a punitive expedition by 
British and French troops has taken Peking, a treaty is negotiated 
guaranteeing the right of Europeans to travel in the interior of China, 
freedom to preach Christianity, an indemnity, and a customs tariff legal- 
izing the import of opium. Following the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 
Great Britain gives up its protectorate over the Mosquito Coast. 


Alexander II by general decree emancipates the Russian serfs. War 
opens between the United States of America and the recently organized 
Confederate States of America. Great Britain and France issue proclam- 
ations of neutrality. Great Britain renounces its claims to the Bonin 
Islands in recognition of Japan’s right of possession. ‘The United States 
of Colombia is established under a new federal constitution. 


John McDouall Stuart traverses Australia from Adelaide in the south 


384 


1863 


1864 


1865 


1867 


1869 
1870 


1871 


1873 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


to the north coast of Arnheim Land. The “Stuart line” of 1800 miles 
is later occupied by the overland electric telegraph. 


President Lincoln proclaims the emancipation of slaves in territory of 
the Confederate States, a declaration by the commander-in-chief of the 
policy which is to guide the United States army as the lines advance. 
Holland abolishes slavery. 


Archduke Maximilian, brother of the Emperor of Austria, mounts the 
throne in Mexico at the invitation of Napoleon III whose troops have 
overturned the republic. A conference is held in Quebec to consider 
the inclusion of Canada in a federal union contemplated by New Bruns- 
wick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The latter colony 
rejects the proposals. France institutes a commandant in the Loyalty 
Islands as a dependency of New Caledonia. A conference on forming 
a union is held at Lima between representatives of Guatemala, 
Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. 


By constitutional amendment slavery is abolished throughout the Amer- 
ican Union. A subsequent amendment prohibits the States from abridg- 
ing the suffrage on the ground of race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude, 


A re-organization of the Hapsburg Empire is effected by a Compromise 
known as the Dual System, which divides the realm into two sections, 
Austria and Hungary, each, under an identical sovereign and ministry, 
being provided with a separate constitution, parliament, and administra- 
tion. ‘The American secretary of state, W. H. Seward, by diplomatic 
pressure induces Napoleon III to withdraw the French troops from 
Mexico, whereupon the republic is re-established. The Dominion of 
Canada is instituted by the British North America Act. Russia sells 
Alaska to the United States of America. 


The Suez Canal is opened. 


After a formal show of armed resistance, under Pius IX, the small re- 
maining Papal States are surrendered to Italy, to be incorporated in 
the kingdom, and the temporal power of the Papacy is brought to a 
period. Manitoba is made a province of the Dominion of Canada. 
Cuba enacts freedom for slaves who have passed or shall hereafter 
pass the age of sixty, and for all children of slaves born after this 
date. Paraguay, prostrated under the despotism of Solano Lopez, 
adopts a republican constitution, and owing to the rivalry of Brazil 
and Argentina effects its independence. 


Claims arising from depredations on United States commerce by Con- 
federate cruisers built in and clearing from English ports are settled by 
a Genevan arbitration tribunal. British Colombia becomes a province of 
the Dominion of Canada. The Empire of Brazil decrees the gradual 
abolition of slavery. As arbitrator, William I, first German Emperor, 
awards to the United States of America the north-west boundary 
disputed with Great Britain, including San Juan Island in Puget Sound. 


L. A. Thiers, first president of the Third French Republic, is suc- 
ceeded by Marshal MacMahon. The Constitutional Laws, passed in 
establishing the republic, lodge executive power in a ministry re- 
sponsible to a chamber of Deputies elected on the basis of universal man- 


1874 


1875 


1877 


1878 


1879 


1880 


1881 


1882 


1883 


1884 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 385 


hood suffrage. Prince Edward Island becomes a province of the 
Dominion of Canada. 


The International Postal Union is founded at Berne. Fiji is annexed 
by Great Britain. The Malay State of Perak is placed under a British 
protectorate later enlarged to embrace the Federated Malay States. 


Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the support of Serbia and Montenegro, 
revolt against Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz I. Ernest Giles’s expeditions between 
Port Augusta in South Australia and Perth in Western Australia close 
the long sustained search for pastoral land in the uninhabitable westerly 
interior of the continent. 


Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India. Russia declares war 
on Turkey. The troops of Alexander II pour through Rumania and 
shut up the Ottoman army in Plevna, crossing at its fall to the shores of 
the sea of Marmora and forcing Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II to sue for 
peace. By the terms of the treaty of San Stefano, which proposes a 
greater Bulgaria under Russian influence, (an autonomous principal- 
ity extending from the Black Sea to the Aegean), besides providing 
Turkish recognition of the independence (with enlarged boundaries) 
of Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro, the power of Turkey in the 
Balkan area is to be almost extinguished. 


The Congress of Berlin, under the presidency of Bismarck, revises the 
Treaty of San Stefano, putting Bosnia and Herzegovina under the 
administration of Austria, and Cyprus under that of Great Britain, 
granting Thessaly to Greece, Macedonia to Turkey, and to Russia, 
southern Bessarabia and part of the Armenian borderland in the Caucasus. 
All unoccupied British territory in North America is annexed to the 
Dominion of Canada. Only Newfoundland, England’s oldest colony, 
remains aloof. 


Dual control of Egypt by Great Britain and France is established in 
the interest of European bondholders. Afghanistan cedes British 
Baluchistan which later becomes a province of British India. 


President Rutherford B. Hayes voices American opposition to the con- 
struction of a Panama canal by European capital. 


A French force crosses the Algerian frontier to Tunis and compels the 
bey to accept a French protectorate over Tunisia. “Tuamotu archi- 
pelago is annexed to France, forming part of the dependency of ‘Tahiti. 


After preparation by treaty with Peking the United States of America 
excludes Chinese immigration. ‘To put down disorders France sends 
troops to Tongking, where they clash with Chinese garrisons. 


Great Britain, upon suppressing a revolt under Arabi Pasha, assumes 
a predominant position in Egypt. By treaties ending a war of inter- 
vention Annam and Tongking pass under the protectorate of France. 
The Northern Pacific Railway gpens its lines from the Missouri to 
Seattle. ‘The Southern Pacific Railway is completed from New Orleans 
to San Francisco. 


A comprehensive parliamentary Reform Act reconstructs the British 
electorate and enlarges the membership of the Commons. Germany 


386 


1885 


1886 


1887 


1888 


1889 


1890 


1891 


1892 
1893 


1894 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


acquires the Bismarck archipelago. Russia annexes Merv in Turkestan, 
commanding the entrance to Afghanistan. Gold is discovered in the 
Transvaal. 


Fifteen powers hold a conference at Berlin on the occupation of Africa. 
A Balkan war, in which Bulgaria repulses Serbia’s attack, prompted by 
the Bulgarian incorporation of Eastern Rumelia, is ended by the inter- 
vention of Austria. In dealing with the native Mahdist insurrection in 
the Sudan, a British relief expedition under Lord Wolseley arrives at 
Khartum too late to prevent its surrender and the death of General 
Charles George Gordon and his men. The United States of America 
prohibits the importation of labor under contract. Germany annexes the 
Marshall Islands in the western Pacific. Its claims to the Caroline 
Islands, hitherto Spanish, are arbitrated by Pope Leo XIII, who decides 
in favor of Spain but awards Germany free trading-rights. 


The Canadian Pacific Railway is completed. Under a new constitution 
the Republic of Colombia abolishes its federal system, the states becoming 
departments with governors appointed by the president. 


The Wallis archipelago in the Pacific is placed under a French pro- 
tectorate, extended in the year following to include the Horne Islands. 


The Empire of Brazil decrees the total abolition of slavery without 
compensation to slave owners. Chile takes possession of Easter Island 
(Rapanui). Great Britain annexes the Manihiki archipelago in the 
central Pacific, and in view of laying a cable, the America Islands. 


The first International Conference of American States is held in Wash- 
ington, James G. Blaine, secretary of state, presiding. It leads to the 
establishment there of the International Bureau of American Republics, 
later named the Bureau of the Pan-American Union. The Samoan 
Islands are placed by treaty under the joint control of America, Great 
Britain and Germany. Dom Pedro II of Brazil is deposed and sent to 
Portugal. The empire becomes a republic as the United States of Brazil. 


Japan institutes a parliament under its hereditary ruler, the Mikado. 
An Anglo-German agreement delimits spheres of influence in Africa, 
blocking the British plan to connect its possessions north and south, from 
the Nile to the Cape, but recognizing a British protectorate over Uganda 
and‘ over the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar. An Anglo-French 
declaration recognizes a French protectorate over Madagascar, French 


influence in the Sahara, and British influence between the Niger and 
Lake Chad. 


Russia begins the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway. An Anglo- 
Portuguese treaty confirms as British a broad belt of African territory, 
extending from the Cape to Lake Tanganyika, and separating Portu- 
guese possessions on the west and east African coasts. 


Great Britain annexes the Gilbert, and Ellice Islands in the Pacific. 


The Great Northern railway is opened from St. Paul to Puget Sound. 
Belgium establishes manhood suffrage with plural voting. Portugal and 
Holland by treaty adjust their joint possession of the Malay island of 
Timor. 


Japan goes to war with China over claims of influence in Korea. 


1895 


1896 


1898 


1899 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 387 


By terms of peace Japan secures from China the cession of Formosa and 
of the Liao-tung peninsula, the latter being restored to China under 
pressure of Russia, France, and Germany. By a Franco-German con- 
vention, ceding German claims to the Central Sudan, France effects a 
territorial junction of its possessions in the Congo region with those in 
north and west Africa. New Guinea is divided between Great Britain, 
Germany, and the Netherlands. Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador, 
joined later by Costa Rica, establish the Greater Republic of Central 
America, dissolved in 1898. 


Abyssinia under Emperor Menelek II (King of Kings of Ethiopia) 
disposes of an Italian claim to exercise a protectorate by disastrously 
defeating the Italian forces. Germany takes possession of Kiao-chow in 
the Chinese province of Shan-tung. The last vestige of native rule in 
Madagascar, successively a French protectorate and colony, disappears 
in the deportation of Queen Ranavalona. The Olympic games are 
revived at Athens as an international athletic meet. At the four-year 
interval they are held subsequently (except in 1916) in Paris, St. Louis, 
London, Stockholm, and Antwerp. Gold is discovered in the Yukon. 


Russia by lease from China acquires Port Arthur, to be connected by 
rail with the Siberian trunk line, and occupies Manchuria with troops. 
Germany passes its first naval bill to authorize expenditure on a large 
scale. Great Britain obtains a lease of Wei-hai-wei. At Fashoda on the 
Upper Nile an expedition under Captain Marchand, penetrating from 
Brazzaville in the French Congo region, raises the French flag and 
refuses to lower it at the request of General Kitchener, who arrives on 
the scene after breaking through the dervish territory on the north and 
capturing Khartum. Defeated in a brief war with the United States of 
America Spain relinquishes to it Porto Rico, Guam, (the largest of 
the Mariana Islands), the Sulu Islands, and the Philippines, and recog- 
nizes the independence of Cuba. The Hawaiian Islands are annexed by 
the United States of America; its flag is hoisted over Wake Island, 
about midway between Hong-Kong and Honolulu. Pitcairn Island 
is put under the jurisdiction of the British High Commissioner for the 
Western Pacific. A British protectorate is declared over the Santa 


Cruz archipelago in Melanesia. Norway adopts universal manhood 
suffrage. 


At the invitation of Czar Nicholas II a world conference is held at 
the Hague to consider means for the preservation of peace. Great 
Britain enters on a war with the two Boer republics, the Transvaal 
and the Orange Free State. German capitalists begin the construction 
of a railroad into Asia Minor, acquiring later a charter permitting its 
extension to Bagdad on the Tigris. The American proposal of an open 
door in China is made the subject of correspondence by European 
powers and Japan. By an Anglo-French agreement France withdraws 
from its attempt to extend an east and west zone across Africa to the 
Nile, and accepts a boundary consolidating its possessions in north, west, 
and central Africa. Spain sells the Mariana Islands (except Guam), 
together with the Caroline and Pelew Islands to Germany. Great 
Britain and Germany delimit their spheres of influence in the Solomon 
Islands. Great Britain enters on the annexation of the Phoenix Islands. 


388 


1900 


1901 


1902 


1903 


1904 


1905 


1906 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


An arbitration court in Paris settles the boundary line. disputed by 
British Guiana and Venezuela. 


The Commonwealth of Australia is created by the British Parliament, 
confirming the federal constitution voted by the six separate colonies. 
The Transvaal and the Orange Free State are proclaimed British 
colonies. A Boxer uprising in China aimed against foreigners culminates 
in the siege by Chinese troops of the foreign legations in Peking and 
their relief by an international expedition. The three-power protectorate 
over the Samoan Islands is revised by treaty. Great Britain withdraws 
in fawor of Germany and America, the latter exercising control west of 
Tutuila. Hawaii, by Act of Congress; is organized as a Territory in 
the American federal system. ‘The Midway Islands, 1200 miles north- 
west of Honolulu, are included. 


The Northwest Frontier Province of India is constituted. ‘The Cook 
Islands are annexed to New Zealand. A prolonged native insurrection 
in the Philippines sinks to the level of guerilla resistance with the capture 
of the. veteran leader, Aguinaldo, by American troops. 


The second International Conference of American States is held in the 
City of Mexico. 


On the refusal of the Colombian Congress to ratify the Hay-Herran 
treaty for tht construction of an isthmian canal, Panama secedes from 
Colombia, is protected from the landing of Colombian troops by American 
warships, and is recognized as an independent republic. An ostensible 
evacuation of Manchuria by Russian troops results in their concentration 
along the line of the Siberian railway, over which a regular through 
service is established between Moscow and Port Arthur. Denmark. 
grants home rule to Iceland. 


A Franco-British entente* is established by treaty to the effect that 
France concedes Egypt, nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, to 
England, and is allowed a free hand in the independent Mohammedan 
state of Morocco. Japan successfully attacks Russia in a war resulting 
in Russian retirement from Manchuria and the transfer of the lease of 
Port Arthur to Japan. Korea is put under the partial control of 
Japan. <A British expedition to Thibet occupies Lhassa, the Dalai 
Lama fleeing to Mongolia. 


Czar Nicholas II issues a manifesto creating a duma (parliament), and 
guaranteeing liberties of conscience, speech, and association, A railway 
connecting Peking and Hankow - and bridging the Yellow River is 
opened for traffic. An extensive boycott of American goods is carried on 
throughout China in retaliation for American exclusion of Chinese. 
Following a series of native revolts the pacification of the Celebes under 
Dutch authority is completed. Norway dissolves its union with Sweden 
under Oscar II, and a Danish prince is elected king as Haakon VII. 


The Russian Duma meets for the first time; its position is subsequently 
reduced to that of a consultative body. A conference of powers is held 
at Algeciras to devise reforms for the Shereefian Empire of Morocco. 
A treaty ending a war waged by Guatemala against Honduras, Costa 
Rica, and Salvador provides for the settlement of disputes by the arbi- 
tration of America and Mexico. The New Hebrides are brought by 


1907 


1908 


1909 


1910 


1911 
1912 


1913 


1914 


1915 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 389 


treaty under joint British and French influence. ‘The third International 
Conference of American States is held in Rio de Janeiro. 


A second peace conference is held at the Hague. Universal manhood 
suffrage is adopted in Austria. <A limited suffrage is accorded to women 
in Norway. ‘The control of Persia is made the subject of a treaty 
between Great Britain and Russia, by the terms of which Great Britain 
assumes control of southern Persia, and Russia, of northern Persia, the 
remaining two-fifths of the kingdom being left as a central buffer state 
under the shah. New Zealand becomes a British colonial dominion. 
The customs receipts of the Dominican Republic are put by treaty under 
American control. 


A revolution led by the Young Turks party wins the concession by 
Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II of a parliament and a constitution. A Chinese 
imperial decree, resulting from the advance of a reform movement, an- 
nounces the convocation of a parliament in the ninth year following. 
The Congo Free State passes from the personal rule of Leopold II and 
becomes a Belgian colony. Austria, against the protest of Serbia but 
supported by Germany, proclaims its sovereignty over Bosnia. 


The South African Union is formed, comprising Cape Colony, Natal, 
the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony. By the Indian Councils 
Act Great Britain extends the operation of representative councils in 
India. An international conference is held at Shanghai to consider the 
opium trade and habit. The Peking-Kalgan railway, an entirely Chinese 
undertaking, is opened; also the railway from Shanghai to Nanking. 
Siam cedes to Great Britain its suzerain rights over Kelantan, Trengganu, 
Kedah, and Perlis. Sweden adopts universal manhood suffrage. 


Portugal becomes a republic. Korea is annexed to Japan by treaty. The 
fourth International Conference of American States is held in Buenos Aires. 


Italy acquires Tripoli in a successful war with the Ottoman Empire. 


China becomes a republic. The executive is lodged in a premier named 
by the president and a ministry named by the premier, both subject to 
confirmation by parliament. Mulai Hafid, Sultan of Morocco, signs 
a treaty with France accepting its protectorate. Bulgaria, Serbia, 
Greece, and Montenegro successfully make war on the sultan, exacting 
in terms of peace the cession of Macedonia and most of Thrace. 
Universal manhood suffrage is established in Italy. 


In a renewal of the Balkan war over the distribution of conquered 
territory Bulgaria is defeated by its recent allies and Macedonia is 
divided between Serbia and Greece. Norway admits women to the 
suffrage on the same basis as men. 


Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, is murdered 
in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia. Following ultimatums, diplomatic inter- 
changes, and mobilization orders, Austria declares war on Serbia, 
Germany on Russia, and on Germany’s crossing the Belgian frontier to 
attack France Great Britain declares war on Germany. The Panama 
canal is opened. 


The Lusitania is torpedoed off the Irish coast by a German submarine 
and the German government declines to disavow the act. 


390 


1916 


1917 


1918 


1919 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


On the sinking of the Sussex by a German submarine President Wilson 
procures from the German government a disavowal of the commander’s 
act and an undertaking to confine operations of the war to the forces 
of the belligerents. By treaties dealing with canal rights and customs 
American control is made effective over the Republics of Nicaragua and 
Haiti. 

Germany in January enlarges its marine war zone and withdraws its 
restrictions on submarine operations. America joins the allied powers 
and in October American troops enter first line trenches in France. The 
Czarist government is overthrown in Russia and ‘is succeeded after an 
interval by that of the Soviets. America purchases from Denmark the 
islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John in the West Indies and 
extends United States citizenship to the inhabitants of Porto Rico, with 
a resident commissioner at Washington, having a voice but no vote in 
the House of Representatives, 


The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk retires Russia from the war and excludes 
from its territories the borderland provinces, Finland, Esthonia, Livonia, 
Courland, Lithuania, Russian Poland, Ukraine. The German high com- 
mand launches a series of five attacks on the British and French positions 
on the western front, Marshal Foch in supreme allied command begin- 
ning a counter-drive in July. Moving north from Saloniki allied forces 
break the Bulgarian defence. British penetration from the Persian Gulf 
into Mesopotamia and from Suez into Syria and Palestine culminates 
in a series of victories resulting in the collapse of the Ottoman State. 
Beginning along the Piave and pressing towards Vienna, the Italian 
defeats of the Austrians lead to a governmental breakdown and the 
deposition of the Hapsburg dynasty. The German Emperor abdicates 
and retires to Holland. An armistice takes effect Novermber 11. 


A peace conference at Paris concludes a treaty with Germany, in which 
a covenant of a League of Nations is incorporated. By the terms 
of the treaty Germany’s boundaries are narrowed east and west. Alsace- 
Lorraine is returned to France. Most of Posen and West Prussia is 
made part of a renewed Poland. Plebiscite areas, in which the popula- 
tions are to elect their political allegiance, are set up in northern Schles- 
wig and Upper Silesia, rich in coal deposits. The coal mines of the 
Prussian Saar are given to France under administration by the League, 
with a deferred plebiscite. Germany renounces all its overseas pos- 
sessions. Its colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific are distributed as 
conquered territory, either with a transfer of full sovereignty or under 
mandate of the League. In East Africa Great Britain takes over 
Tanganyika, and in West Africa divides, with a major share to F rance, 
Togoland and Cameroon. By the Treaty of St. Germain the small 
Republic of Austria recognizes the independence of new states created 
wholly or partly within former Hapsburg boundaries, comprising the 
republics of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Yugoslavia, a kingdom. 
Other territory is ceded to Rumanja and Italy. By the Treaty of Neuilly 
Bulgaria loses Thrace and the Aegean seaboard and divides Macedonia 
with Greece. Germany adopts a republican constitution. In the Gov- 
ernment of India Act Great Britain provides for the development of 
self-governing institutions in India. 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 391 


1920 By the Treaty of Trianon the Republic of Hungary through cessions 


Wz 


1922 


1923 


of territory to Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, is reduced to 
one-third of the extent of the former kingdom. ‘The terms of the 
Treaty of Sévres internationalize the Constantinople straits area; in 
Asia Minor allot Smyrna to Greece with other spheres to France, Italy, 
and Great Britain, and propose an independent Armenia; assign with 
League mandates Mesopotamia to Great Britain and Syria to France; 
proclaim Palestine a Jewish homeland; and set up the independent 
Kingdom of the Hejaz in Arabia. Mustapha Kemal Pasha organizes 
Turkish opposition to the terms of the Treaty of Sévres. A tribal out- 
break in Morocco is crushed by the French capture of Wazzan. Albania 
becomes independent under a treaty with Italy. Women are admitted 
to the suffrage in the United States of America, and in Italy. 


A new constitution for Turkey is voted by the National Assembly at 
Angora in Anatolia; Mustapha Kemal is chosen president. The United 
States of America concludes a separate peace with Germany. Moroccan 
tribesmen inflict heavy losses on the Spanish forces near Mellila. 


The British protectorate over Egypt is declared abolished, with reserva- 
tion of some imperial rights, and the country proclaimed an independent 
kingdom under Fuad I, ninth of the line founded by Mohammed Ali. 
Greek forces acting from a base at Smyrna to uphold the terms of the 
Sevres treaty are routed by the Turks. The Irish Free State is pro- 
claimed a British Commonwealth. Northern Ireland elects, under the 
terms of treaty, to “contract out” of the Free State, which consists of 
the southern provinces, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, and three 
counties, Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan of Ulster. At a conference 
called at Washington a partial limitation of naval armament is under- 
taken by America, Great Britain and Japan; these powers, with France, 
also guaranteeing the status quo in the Pacific. 


A new treaty is signed at Lausanne with the Anatolian Turks. It de- 
militarizes, but does not internationalize, the Dardanelles, abandons the 
project of an independent Armenia, abolishes extra-territorial rights 
(capitulations), and provides for repatriating Greeks and Turks. Li 
Yuan-hung, twice president of China, yields to the pressure of northern 
military leaders and resigns. The Chinese parliament, convening in 
Peking, elects General Tsao Kun, president. A new constitution 
provides for replacing the provincial armies by a national army. 
Benito Mussolini, premier of Italy, strenghthens his party, the Fascista, 
by procuring the recasting of the electoral law so as to assign two-thirds 
of the seats in the chamber of Deputies to the party obtaining the 
largest number of votes in the elections, the remaining third to be 
distributed proportionately among the minority lists. Abd-el-Karim 
leading the revolt of Moroccan tribesmen puts the Spanish forces in a 
precarious position. At Madrid the civil government is overturned by 
a military coup and a directorate is adopted under Captain General 
Primo de Rivera. Hawaii by act of its legislature adopts a bill of 
rights asserting its privileges as an integral part of the American Union. 
The fifth International Conference of American States is held in 
Santiago, Chile. 


1924 James Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Labor Party, becomes premier 


392 


192) 


EVENTS OF THE PERIOD: A CHRONOLOGY 


of Great Britain. The Labor ministry holds office nine months, 
The Turkish National Assembly abolishes the caliphate and deposes 
the caliph. A new constitution grants the franchise to males over 18, 
and limits the citizenship of non-Turks and non-Moslems. A Greek 
plebiscite confirms by a large majority the action of the National 
Assembly in overthrowing the monarchy and establishing the Republic 
of Greece. Albania becomes a republic. Immigration into the United 
States is restricted by a quota law scaling down the recent intake four- 
fifths, and controlling its European composition in the ratio of ten of the 
“old immigration” (from northern Europe) to one of the “new” (from 
eastern and south-eastern Europe). Japanese, with minor exceptions, 
are excluded. The American military forces are withdrawn from the 
Dominican Republic following elections of a congress and a president, 
and the treaty of 1907 is superseded by ratification of a new conven- 
tion which extends the customs receivership pending amortization of a 
government loan. A disputed presidential election in Honduras brings 
on civil war; order is restored by American naval intervention. 
Captain General Primo de Rivera takes personal command of the Spanish 
forces in Morocco against Abd-el-Karim. 


At Locarno, on Lake Maggiore, Switzerland, a conference is attended 
by representatives of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Great 
Britain, Italy, and Poland, who initial seven treaties of arbitration or 
security, formally signed later in London. In Morocco Abd-el-Karim 
turns his attack against the French in the south and menaces F ez. Com- 
bined French and Spanish operations, extending over a year, bring 
about his surrender. The Spanish military directorate is placed on a 
civil basis with the appointment of Primo de Rivera as premier. A 
customs conference of the powers at Peking accedes to the Chinese 
demand for a treaty giving unrestricted tariff rights to China beginning 
January 1, 1929, China agreeing to abolish on that date the likin, an 
inter-provincial tax on goods in inland transit. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BOOK I 


Bosanquet, Helen, The Family. Macmillan. 1906. 
Comenius, Johann Amos, The Great Didactic (Ed. by M. W. Keatinge). 
Macmillan. 1911. 
Dexter, E. G. History of Education in the United States. Macmillan. 1904. 
Foerster, F. A. Marriage and the Sex Problem. Wells, Gardner. 
Froebel, F. W. A. The Education of Man. Appleton. 
Froebel, F. W. A. The Pedagogics of Kindergarten. Appleton. 
Goodsell, Willystine, 4 History of the Family as a Social and Educational 
Institution. Macmillan. 1915. 
Hall, Granville Stanley, Adolescence (2 Vols.). Appleton. 1904. 
Hall, Granville Stanley, Educational Problems (2 Vols.). Appleton, 1911. 
Hall, Granville Stanley, Youth, Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene. 
Appleton. 1907. 
Kidd, Benjamin, The Science of Power. Methuen. 
Locke, John, Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Putnam. 
Maclver, R. M. The Elements of Social Science. Dutton. 1921. 
Peabody, Francis G. The Christian Life in the Modern World. 
Macmillan. 1914. 
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, Leonard and Gertrude. Harrap. 
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, How Gertrude Teaches Her Children. 
C. W. Bardeen Co., Syracuse. 
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, Meine Lebenschicksale als Vorsteher meiner Erzie- 
hungsinstitute in Burgford und Iferten. Leipsic. 1826. 
Ploss, H. Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der Volker. 
T. Grieben. Leipsic. 1912. 
Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order. Macmillan. 1912. 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Emile; or Treatise on Education. Dutton. 
Royden, A. Maude, Sex and Common Sense. Putnam. 1923. 
Royden, A. Maude, Women at the World’s Crossroads. 
Woman’s Press, New York. 1922. 
Royden, A. Maude, The Church and Woman. Doran. 1925. 
Schmid, K. A. Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 
J. G. Cotta, Stuttgart. 1901. 
Thwing, Charles F. & Carrie F. B. The Family; an Historical and Social Study. 
Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard. 


BOOK II 


Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics. Macmillan. 1904. 
Albertsworth, Modern Religious Thought and Modern Juristic Movements 
(In International Journal of Ethics, Vol. XXXIV, p. 364). 
University of Chicago Press. 1924. 
Beer, Max, Social Struggles in the Middle Ages. Small, Maynard. 1924. 
393 


394 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Beer, Max, Social Struggles in Antiquity. Small, Maynard. 1922. 

Brunner, E. de S. Tested Methods in Town and Country. Doran. 1923. 

Bryce, James, Hindrances to Good Citizenship. Yale University Press. 1910. 

Bryce, James, Studies in History and Jurisprudence (Essay y Ro 9) 

Oxford University Press. 1901. 

Butterfield, K. L. 4 Christian Program for the Rural Community. 

Doran. 1923. 

City Planning: Proceedings of the National Conference on City Planning. 

130 East 22nd Street, New York. 

Coulanges, Fustel de, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and 
Institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome (Chapters 1-4). 

Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard. 

Coulanges, Fustel de, The Origin of Property in Land. Scribner. 

Cunningham, William, Christianity and Social Questions. Scribner. 1910. 

Douglass, H. P. The St. Louis Church Survey. Doran. 1924. 

Douglass, H. P. The Springfield Church Survey. Doran. 1926. 

Douglass, H. P. One Thousand City Churches. Doran. 1926. 

Green, Thomas H. Principles of Political Obligation. Longmans, Green. 

Harcourt, D. S. The Farmer and his Community. Harcourt, Brace. 

Knowles, Morris, Industrial Housing. McGraw-Hill. 1920. 

Kocourek and Wigmore. Formative Influences of Legal Development (Chapter 
14, The Influence of Religion upon Law as Illustrated by the Idea of 
Property). Little, Brown. 1918. 

Lindeman, E. C. The Community. Association Press, New York. 1921. 

Marden, Orison Swett, Selling Things. Crowell. 1916. 

McCall, Samuel W. The Liberty of Citizenship. Yale University Press. 1915. 

Nolen, John, New Ideals in the Planning of Cities, Towns, and Villages. 

American City Bureau, New York. 1919. 

Nordhoff, Charles, Communistic Societies of the United States. Harper. 1875. 

Ogburn, W. F. Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature. 

Huebsch. 1922. 

Park and Burgess. The City. University of Chicago Press. 1926. 

Peabody, F. G. Jesus Christ and the Social Question. Macmillan. 1901. 

Platt, James, Business. Putnam. 1899. 

Pound, Roscoe, The Spirit of the Common Law (Lecture 2, Puritanism and 
the Common Law). Marshall Jones, Boston. 1921. 

Pound, Roscoe, Interpretations of Legal History (Lecture 2, Ethical and 
Religious Interpretations). Macmillan. 1923. 

Rosebush, J. G. Ethics of Capitalism. Association Press, New York. 1923. 

Taft, William H. Four Aspects of Civic Duty. Scribner. 1911. 

Tawney, R. H. The Acquisitive Society. Bell. 1921. 

Unwin, Raymond, Town Planning in Practice. Scribner. 1910. 

Zulueta, F. M. de, The Girard Testimonial Essays (Law Quarterly Review, 
Vol. XXX, p. 214; Influence of Christianity upon Roman Law, 2. 217). 

Carswell Co., Toronto. 1914. 


BOOK III 


Adams, Randolph G. History of the Foreign Policy of the United States. 
Macmillan. 1924. 


Alvarez, Alejandro, American Problems in International Law. 


Baker, Voorhis. 1910. 


Ee 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 395 


Bard, H. E. Intellectual and Cultural Relations between the United States and 
the other Republics of America. 
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington. 1914. 
Brown, William Adams, Is Christianity Practicable? Scribner. 1916. 
Cadman, S. Parkes, Christianity and the State. Macmillan. 1924. 
Christian Work in Latin America (3 Vols.). 
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 1917. 
Conrad, P. A. Christian Pan-Americanism. New York. 1918. 
Coupland, R. Wilberforce. Oxford University Press. 
Curtis, Lionel, The Commonwealth of Nations: An Enquiry into the Nature 
of Citizenship in the British Empire. Macmillan. 1916. 
Dewey, John, Reconstruction in Philosophy. Holt. 
Figgis, John Neville, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius. 
Putnam. 1907. 
Figgis, John Neville, Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (In Cam- 
bridge Modern History, Vol. II, Ch. 22). Macmillan. 
Fish, Carl Russell, American Diplomacy. Holt. 1923. 
Garcia, Calderén F. Latin America: Its Rise and Progress. Scribner. 1918. 
Garcia, Mérou, Historia de la Diplomacia Americana, Politica Internacional de 
los Estados Unidos (2 Vols.). F. Lajouane y Ca., Buenos Aires. 1914. 
Gierke, Otto, Political Theories of the Middle Ages. Putnam. 1900. 
Green, John Richard, A Short History of the English People. Macmillan. 
Hershey, A. S. The Calvo and Drago Doctrines (In American Journal of 
International Law, Vol. I). 
Hodgson, James G. Recognition of Soviet Russia. 
H. W. Wilson Co., New York. 1925. 
Hoyland, John S. 4 Brief History of Civilization. 
Oxford University Press. 1925. 
Laski, Harold J. Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham. Holt. 
Lawrence, T. J. The Principles of International Law. Heath. 
Lecky, W. E. H. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism 
in Europe. Appleton. 
Miller, David Hunter, The Geneva Protocol. Macmillan. 1925. 
Morley, John, Oliver Cromwell. Century. 1900. 
Morley, John, Life of William Ewart Gladstone (3 Vols.). 
Macmillan. 1911. 
Munro, Dana Gardner, The Five Republics of Central America. 
Oxford University Press. 1918. 
Page, Kirby, War: Its Causes, Consequences, and Cure. Doran. 1923. 
Quesada, Gonzalo de, Arbitration in Latin America. 
Wyt and Zonen, Rotterdam. 1907. 
Robertson, William Spence, Hispanic-American Relations with the United States. 
Oxford University Press. 1923. 
Rodriguez, José Ignacio, American Constitutions. 
Pan-American Union, Washington. 
Seignobos, Charles, History of Medieval and of Modern Civilization to the 
End of the Seventeenth Century. Scribner. 1907. 
Sheperd, William R. Latin America. Holt. 1917. 
Smith, Lionel Arthur, English Political Philosophy in the Seventeenth and 
Eighteenth Centuries (In Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VI, Ch. 
23). Macmillan. 


396 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century 
(2 Vols.). Putnam. 1902. 


BOOKS IV and V 


Andrews, C. F. The Renaissance in India: Its Missionary Aspects. 
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 1912. 
Bryce, James, The Holy Roman Empire. Macmillan. 
Bukhsh, S. Khuda, History of Islamic Peoples. Lwuzac. 
Chirol, Valentine, Occident and Orient. University of Chicago Press. 1925. 
Chirol, Valentine, India. Scribner. 1926. 
Dennis, J. S. Christian Missions and Social Progress (3 Vols.). Revell. 
Dawson, T. C. South American Republics. Putnam. 1903. 
Dougall, William, Ethics and some Modern W orld Problems. Methuen, 1924. 
Farquhar, J. N. Modern Religious Movements in India. Macmillan. 1915. 
Fleming, Daniel Johnson, Building with India. Missionary Education Move- 
ment, New York. 1922 
Foster, Charles, Mahometanism Unveiled. Calcutta. 1905. 
Gandhi, M. K. Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi (Introduction by 
C. F. Andrews). Natesan and Co., Madras. 1922. 
Geiger, Abraham, Judaism and Islam. Bloch Publishing Co., New York. 
Goldziher, Ignaz, Mohammed and Islam. Yale University Press. 1922. 
Gregory, J. W. The Menace of Color. Lippincott. 1925. 
Grant, Madison, The Passing of the Great Race. Scribner. 1916. 
Haines, C. R. Islam as a Missionary Religion. S. P. C. K. 1889. 
Harris, M. H. A Thousand Years of Jewish History. 
Bloch Publishing Co., New York. 
Harris, M. H. History of the Medieval Jews. Bloch Publishing Co., New York. 
Harris, M. H. Modern Jewish History. Bloch Publishing Co., New York. 
Hell, Joseph, Die Kultur der Araber. Quelle und Meyer, Leipsic. 1909. 
Hurgronje, Snouck, Mohammedanism. Putnam. 1916. 
Jacobs, Joseph, Jewish Contributions to Civilization. 
Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia. 1919. 
Jastrow, Morris, The Study of Religion. Scribner. 1902. 
Johnston, H. H. The Backward Peoples. Oxford University Press. 1920. 
Jones, Thomas Jesse, Education in Africa (Report of the Educational Com- 
mission to West, South, and Equatorial Africa). 1922. 
Josey, C. C. Race and National Solidarity. Scribner. 1923. 
Macnicol, Nicol, The Making of Modern India. 
Oxford University Press. 1924. 
Macnicol, Nicol, Indian Theism (Religious Quest of India Series). 
Oxford University Press. 1915. 
Mathews, Basil, The Clash of Color. Doran. 1924. 
Marvin, F. S. The Western Races and the W orld. 
Oxford University Press. 1922. 
Montefiore, Claude G. Judaism and St. Paul. Dutton. 1915. 
Montefiore, Claude G. The Religious Teaching of Jesus. Macmillan. 1910. 
Montefiore, Claude G. The Old Testament and After. Macmillan. 1923, 
Morel, E. D. King Leopold’s Rule in Africa. Heinemann. 1904. 
Morel, E. D. Red Rubber; the Story of the Rubber Slave Trade. 
Huebsch. 1918. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 397 


Natarajan, K. (Ed.) The Indian Social Reformer, a weekly English Review 
of Politics, Social Reform, and Religion. Bombay. 
Oldham, J. H. Christianity and the Race Problem. Doran. 1924. 
Pratt, James Bissett, India and Its Faiths: A Traveller's Record. 
Houghton, Mifflin. 1915. 
Radhakrishnan, S. Indian Philosophy (Vol. I). Allen and Unwin. 1923. 
Rice, Stanley, The Challenge of Asia. Murray. 1925. 
Smith, R. Bosworth, Mohammed and Mohammedanism. Murray. 
Simkhovitch, V. K. Towards the Understanding of Jesus. Macmillan. 1924. 
Speer, Robert E. Of One Blood. 
Missionary Education Movement, New York. 1924. 
Speer, Robert E. Race and Race Relations. Revell. 1924. 
Stoddard, Lothrop, The Rising Tide of Color. Scribner. 1920. 
Temple, C. L. Native Races and Their Rulers. 
Argus Printing and Publishing Co., Capetown. 1918. 
Townsend, Meredith, Asia and Europe. Putnam. 1905. 
Visvesvaraya, M. Reconstructing India. P.S. King and Son, London. 1920. 
Willoughby, W. C. Race Problems in Africa. Oxford University Press. 1924. 
The World Task of the Christian Church. 
Student Christian Movement, London. 1925. 


BOOK VI 


Allworthy, T. B. Women in the Apostolic Church. Simpkin, Marshall. 

Ashworth, Robert A. The Union of Christian Forces in America. 

American Sunday School Union, Philadelphia. 1915. 

Bell, G. K. A. Documents on Christian Unity. Oxford University Press. 1924. 

Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man. Macmillan. 1911. 

Booth-Tucker, Frederick, The Life of Catherine Booth. Revell. 1892. 

Branford, Victor, Science and Sanctity. Williams and Norgate. 1923. 

Brailsford, Mabel, Quaker Women. Duckworth. 1915. 

Brown, A. J. Unity and Missions. Revell. 1915. 

Carter, D. S. Christianity in the Modern W orld. 

Hodder and Stoughton. 1906. 

Christian Unity, Its Principles and Possibilities. 

Association Press, New York. 1921. 

Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury's Committee on the Ministry 
of Women. S.P.C.K. 

Conference on Christian Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, C. O.P.£E.C. 
Commission Reports (12 Vols., viz.: I. The Nature of God and His 
Purpose for the World; II, Education; III. The Home; IV. The Re- 
lation of the Sexes; V. Leisure; VI. The Treatment of Crime; VII. 
International Relations; VIII. Christianity and War; IX. The Social 
Function of the Church; X. Industry and Property; XI. Politics and 
Citizenship; XII. Historical Illustrations of the Social Effects of Chris- 
tianity). Longmans, Green. 1924. 

Crane, W. Leighton, Church Divisions and Christianity. Macmillan. 1916. 

Dobschiitz, A. von, Christian Life in the Primitive Church. Putnam. 1904, 

Donaldson, James, The Position and Influence of Women in Ancient Greece 
and Rome, and among the Early Christians. Longmans, Green. 1907. 

Figgis, John Neville, Churches in the Modern State. Longmans, Green. 1920. 

Follett, M. P. Creative Experience. Longmans, Green. 1924. 


398 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Glover, T. R. The Free Churches and Reunion. Simpkin, Marshall. 1921. 
Goudge, H. L. The Place of Women in the Church. Morehouse. 1917. 
Haldane, J. B. S. Daedalus. Dutton. 1924. 
Hall, F. J. The Church and the Sacramental System. Longmans, Green. 1920. 
Hart, Joseph K. The Discovery of Intelligence. Century. 1924, - 
Headlam, A.C. The Church and Christian Reunion. Longmans, Green. 1920. 
Hobhouse, L. T. Morals in Evolution (2 Vols.). WHolt. 1907. 
Hugel, Friedrich von, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion 
Dutton. 1921. 
Huxley, Thomas F. Science and Hebrew Tradition. Appleton. 1914. 
Lea, H. C. History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (2 Vols.). Macmillan. 1907. 
Lecky, W. E. H. History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. 
Appleton. 
Macfarland, Charles S. International Christian Movements. Revell. 1924. 
McCabe, Joseph, The Religion of Woman. Watts and Co., London. 1908. 
Moore, George Foot, The Birth and Growth of Religion. Scribner. 1924. 
Murray, Gilbert, Four Stages of Greek Religion. Oxford University Press. 
Northcote, Hugh, Christianity and. Sex Problems. 
F, A. Davis Co., Philadelphia. 
Oman, John. The Church and the Divine Order. Doran. 191 is 
Palmer, E. C. The Great Church Awakes. Longmans, Green. 1920. 
Power, Eileen, Medieval English Nunneries. Macmillan. 1923. 
Quick, O. C. Catholic and Protestant Elements in Christianity. 
Longmans, Green. 1924. 
Ragg, Lonsdale, History of the Church of the Apostles. Macmillan. 1909. 
Robinson, J. H. The Mind in the Making. Harper. 1921. 
Sertillanges, A. D. The Church. Benziger. 1922. 
Smythe, Newman, and Walker, Williston, Approaches Toward Christian Unity. 
Yale University Press. 1919. 
Séderblom, Nathan, Christian Fellowship. Revell. 1923. 
Sumner, William Graham, Folkways. Ginn. 1907. 
Westermarck, E. A. The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (2 
Vols.). Macmillan. 1908. 
Westermarck, E. A. History of Human M arriage. Macmillan. 1902. 
Whitnall, H. O. The Dawn of Mankind. R. G. Badger, Boston. 1924, 


BOOK VII 


Acton, Lord, The History of Freedom and Other Essays. Macmillan. 1907. 
Babbitt, Irving, Rousseau and Romanticism. Houghton, Miffiin. 1919, 
Bury, J. B. The Idea of Progress: An Enquiry into its Origin and Growth. 
Macmillan. 1920. 
Dickinson, C. H. The Christian Reconstruction of Modern Life. 
Macmillan. 1913. 
Fairbairn, A. M. The Philosophy of the Christian Religion. Doran. 1913. 
Figgis, J. N. Civilization at the Cross-Roads. Longmans, Green. 1912. 
Guizot, F. P. G. The History of Civilization from the Fall of the Roman 
Empire to the French Revolution. 
Hyde, William de Witt, From Epicurus to Christ; a Study in the Principles of 
Personality. Macmillan. 1905. 
Seignobos, Charles, 4 History of Contemporary Civilization. Scribner. 1909. 
Troeltsch, Ernst, Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Tiibingen. 1922. 


a - 


INDEX 


Abrahams, Israel, Jewish scholar, 236 

Adams, John Quincy, on relations with 
Spanish America, 182 

Africa, Jean Mackenzie on women of, 
37; General Smuts and race problem 
in South, 206; negro question in, 206; 
causes of unrest among indigenous 
peoples of, 206; John Kirk on results 
of white contact in, 213; Thomas 
Jesse Jones on results of colonization 
in, 213; Lothrop Stoddard on Chris- 
tianization of, 214; Berlin Confer- 
ence, 217; attitude towards women in 
churches of South, 313 


Agassiz, Alexander, on missionary 
work, 214 
Agricultural organization, its effect 


on rural institutions, 59 

Algeria, development of racial self- 
consciousness in, 203 

America, progress of city planning in, 
87; school system in Philippines, 132; 
John Bassett Moore on its leadership 
in cause of peace, 146; self-righteous- 
ness of people of, 148; negro question 
in, 207 

America, South, Asiatic immigration 
to, 222; benefits of colonization, 213 

Andersen, Hans Christian, his view of 
childhood, 31 

Anglican Church, theory of nature of, 
266; its interchange of ordaining 
bishops with Eastern Orthodox 
Church, 336 

Anglican Communion, Conference of 
Bishops of, 339 

Anglo-American treaty of 1794, a step 
forward in international relations, 
146 

Anglo-Japanese alliance, 
Treaty and, 140 

Animism, 242 

poe Nena as political movement, 
23 


Four-Power 


Apollinarian doctrines 
Church, 323 

Apostolic succession, claim of Anglican 
Church regarding, 266; in various 
churches, 270; necessity of some form 
Of 273 

Arbitration, industrial, 93; Conference 
on Ethical Forces in Advancing 
Standards in Industry, 93; Perma- 
nent Court of, 144; treaties attempted 
by Theodore Roosevelt, 145; treaties 
attempted by W. H. Taft, 146; W. J. 
Bryan’s “peace plan,” 146; develop- 
ment of principle in Spanish America, 
179; ancient idea, 195; international 
law and, 195 

Arian doctrine rejected by Church, 323 

Me abandonment of Christian, 
174 

Armenian communion, its theory of 
nature of Church, 266 

Armistice, 1918, violation of terms of, 
142 

Arnold, Matthew, on power of Paul’s 
teaching, 6 

Arya Samaj movement, 256 

Asia, development of spirit of racial 
self-assertion in, 220 

Asiatic labor, econoic problem of, 
220 

Asiatics, their resentment of race dis- 
crimination, 227 

Australia, Asiatic immigration to, 222; 
attitude towards women in churches 
of, 314 

Balfour Declaration, encourages Jewish 
settlement in Palestine, 235 

Baptist churches, organic union in, 329 

Baptist World Alliance, 339 

Bartlet, Vernon, on property, 97 

Beaulieu, P. Le Roy, champiofis cause 
of Jews, 235 

Bellarmine, Robert Cardinal, his “De 
Ecclesia’, 265 


rejected by 


399 


400 


Berlin Conference, 1885, its position on 
colonial relationships in Africa, 217 

Bernard of Clairvaux, espouses cause of 
Jews, 234 

Bethesda Conference, Swiss Protestant 
Federation calls, 340 

Bible, its authority in England during 
Puritan age, 150; relative position 
given to, 275; in Protestant churches, 
276; in Roman Catholic Church, 276; 
Protestantism convinced of need of 
interpretation of, 276 

Birmingham, Conference on Christian 
Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, 
1924, held at, 90 

Blackwell, Antoinette, first woman to 
be ordained minister, 310 

Blaine, James G., his plan of Pan- 
Americanism, 182 

Bolivar, Simon, ‘advocate of Pan- 
Americanism, 182 

Bombay, Parsi settlement at, 254 

Bonomelli, Bishop, on attitude of Pa- 
pacy towards Protestantism, 337 

Booth, Catherine, her ministry, 309 

Brahmans, their theory of new birth, 
35; Christian converts among, 255 

Brahmo Samaj, Raja Ram Mohun Roy 
leader of, 255 

Branch theory of Church, 266 

Branford, Victor, on science and re- 
ligion, 290; on cathedrals, 291 

British Commonwealth, effect of 
Evangelical movement on structure 
of, 158; character of, 161; Christian- 
ity and post-war problems of, 162 

British Empire, expansion of, 154; 
cause of expansion of, 154; outcome 
of Puritan movement, 155 

Brooks, Phillips, 175 

Brotherhood, based on the idea of God 
as Father of human race, 164 

Browning, Robert, his portrayal of 
woman in Pompilia, 38 

Bryan, W. J., his “peace plan”, 146 

Buddhism, statistics of adherents, 242; 
standards of sexual morality and, 
253; absorbed in Hinduism, 254 

Burnham, D. H., his plan for San 
Francisco, 86 

Business, women in, 41 ; “classical” 
economics in, 91; personnel move- 
ment*in, 93; Christian influence in, 
299 

Business ethics, statements of churches 
on, 90 

Calvin, John, his view of democracy 


INDEX 


in Christianity, 21; advocate of 
Christian fraternity, 326 

Canada, United States and, 143 ; Chi- 
hese and Japanese immigration to, 
221; attitude towards women in 
United Church of, 313; United 
Church of, 329 

Capitalism, decay of feudalism followed 
by rise of, 98; destroys principle of 
absolute property, 101 

Caribbean states, extension of United 
States control to, 134 

Casas, Bartholomew de las, on Spanish 
cruelty in South American coloniza- 
tion, 212 

Caste, in India, 253 

Catholic churches, other than Roman 
Catholic, 266 

Catholics, efforts made immediately 
after Reformation to heal schism 
between Protestants and, 326 

Central America, extension of United 
States control to, 134 

Central American Court of Justice, in- 
fluence of United States in destroy- 
ing, 135; new court set up, 136; 
creation of, 180; character of treaty 
ae 181; Christian aspect of, 
81 

Central Bureau for Relief of the 
Evangelical Churches of Europe, 341 

Charlemagne, his humane policy to- 
wards Jews, 234 

Chicago-Lambeth proposals (Quadri- 
lateral) articles of, 333; adoption by 
bishops of Anglican communion at 
Lambeth Conference, 333; agree- 
ments and controversies over, 333 

Child labor, 34 

Childhood, in Christ’s teaching, 28; 

views on, held by Hosea, 28; views 

on, held by Zachariah, 29; Martin 

Luther, 29; St. Paul, 29; Charles 

Wagner, 30; Paul Leseur, 30; Hans 

Christian Andersen, 31; Bret Harte, 

31 


Children, exposure of, in pre-Christian 
times and among primitive tribes, 33; 
R. Kittel on their place in develop- 
ment of race, 33; influence of Christ- 
mas festival on their place in world, 
33; problem of housing in modern 
cities, 34; education in relation to 
child welfare, 34; compulsory school 
system and child welfare, 34; Chris- 
tian significance of baptism in child 
life, 35; woman and child, 36; super- 


INDEX 


Children, “Continued” vol I, II, 1V 
Vol III 
stition charging Jews with slaying 
Christian, 234 

China, problem of, 140; attitude to- 
wards women in churches of, 315; 
need of missionary church union in, 
331 

Chirol, Valentine, on Christian missions 
in India, 258 

Christ, significance of his first com- 
mandment, 364; significance of his 
second commandment, 14; neighborly 
love in Hebrew Law before time of, 
15; his new conception of neighbor, 
18; childhood in his teaching, 28; as 
a child, 32; woman and, 37; his con- 
ception of family, 44; early Church 
in dissension over relation of human 
and divine natures in, 323; gives 
new meaning to words of Mosaic 
Law, 364; his commandment potent 
and effectual, 366; describes, but 
does not analyze God, 371 

Christ, Body of, description of Church, 
263 

Christian Endeavor Union, world con- 
ventions of, 343 

Christian scholarship, unity of, 319 

Christian Science, in relation to theory 
of nature of Church, 267 

Christian unity, basis of, in early 
Church, 320; new spirit of, in mis- 
sionary field, 330 

Christianity, mass relations and, 1; 
spread of, during early Roman Em- 
pire, 4; democracy inherent in, 21; 
John Calvin’s and John Knox’s views 
of democracy in, 21; relation to 
country life, 55; farmer and, 61; 
attitude towards ownership, 95; at- 
titude towards slavery, 96; influence 
on Roman law, 109; exercise of inter- 
national police power and, 136; 
modern democracy and, 159; post-war 
problems and, 162; international 
politics and, 164; nationalization of, 
174; gives way to legalism as basis 
of war powers of State, 191; influ- 
ence on international law, 193; race 
problem and, 209; C. C. Josey on 
race and, 214; colonizing nations and, 
214; race relations and, 224; close 
relation to Judaism, 231; need for 
co-operation with Judaism, 240; 
Moslem estimate, 243; Church as a 
corruption of, 279; supreme teacher 
of personality, 356; its contribution 


401 


to philosophy of history, 359 

Christmas, influence of festival on 
children’s place in world, 33 

Church, women in, 41; family life and 
apostolic, 44; influence of rural en- 
vironment on, 56; in co-operative 
movements, 59; in country, 60; equity 
influenced by law of medieval, 111; 
in development of European nations, 
171; necessity for co-operation, 176; 
Roman Catholic definition of nature 
of, 265; branch theory of, 266; In- 
visible, nature of, 267; apostolic suc- 
cession in, 270; sacraments in, 273; 
position given to Bible in, 275; as 
custodian and interpreter of Scrip- 
tures, 277; hope for unity, 279; as a 
corruption of Christianity, 279; mis- 
understandings concerning functions 
of, 280; as arc of salvation, 280; 
two forms of this theory, 281; com- 
pany of penitents, 282; relating men 
consciously to God as primary func- 
tion, 283; attitude towards social and 
political reforms, 285; leadership of, 
286; attitude towards war, 287; hope 
for repudiation and abolition of war 
through, 288; wasteful competition, 
294; spiritual unity of, 319; basis of 
Christian unity in early, 320; deteri- 
oration of unity in early, 322; doc- 
trines of Arians, Eutychians; Apolli- 
narians, Nestorians, Monothelites, 
and Monophysites, rejected by, 323; 
schism of Orthodox and Roman, 323; 
Renascence and Reformation influ- 
ence, 324; impaired by lack of unity, 
325; movement for organic union of, 
328; movement for federative union, 
328; in missionary field, 330; mutual 
recognition of validity of ministerial 
orders, 336; federal councils, 340; 
(and see) Anglican; Armenian; 
Catholic; Christian Science; City; 
Congregational; Coptic; Greek Or- 
thodox; Methodist; Mystical; Nes- 
torian ; Oriental; Presbyterian ; 
Quakers; Roman Catholic; Unita- 
tian; United, of Canada 

Church government, Protestant forms 
of, 267 

Church of England, women’s position 
in relation to ministry of, 311; 
Order of Deaconesses in, 311 

Church Peace Union, formation and 
work of, 341; World Alliance for 
International Friendship through the 
Churches initiated by, 341 


402 


Churchmen, fundamental issue with 
non-churchmen, 289; common ground 
with non-churchmen, 290; task con- 
fronting non-churchmen and, 291; 
controversy over religious teaching 
in schools, 295 

Citizen, duty to accept public office, 
118; obligation to vote, 119; duty to 
help mould public opinion, 121 

City church, co-operation in social 
work, 67; effect of urban congestion 
on, 68; as a resort for tenement 
populations, 68; equipment of, 69; 
as a place of congregation rather than 
fellowship, 70; effect of city growth 
on, 71; religion of unurbanized popu- 
lation, 74; application of its religious 
and social ideals to community life, 
hd 

City life, individual in, 27; ethics in, 72; 
growth of city population dependent 
on migration, 73 

City planning, origin of, 81; Housing 
and Town Planning Act, 1909, 81; 
J. W. Tomlinson defines, 82; prog- 
ress in America, 87 (and see) 
Stret plan; Regional planning 

Civics, woman in, 41 

Civilization, law a product and prop of, 
106; Hegel, Marx, N ietzsche, French 
and British Positivists, Schopenhauer, 
Spengler on, 351; definition of, 352; 
first concern of, 352: history as a 
guide for, 352; spiritual foundations 
of, 354; individual and, 355 

Clay, Henry, advocate of Pan-Ameri- 
canism, 182 

Coke, Edward, and English common 
law, 113 

Colonial expansion, survey of, 210; 
motives behind, 211; Sidney Olivier 
on motive of, 211 

Colonial relationships, in Africa, Ber- 
lin Conference, 1885, avows obliga- 
tion, 217; Convenant of League of 
Nations on, 217; Herbert Edwardes 
on Christian policy in, 217 

Colonization, effect of Reformation on 
English, 153; evils attending, 212; 
Bartholomew de las Casas on Span- 
ish cruelty in South American, 212; 
T. C. Dawson on benefits of, in South 
America, 213; Thomas Jesse Jones 
on results of African, 213; and mis- 
sionary work, 214 

Commandment, significance of first 
Christian, 364; significance of second 
Christian, 14; a new and universal 


INDEX 


interpretation of neighborly love, 16; 
Moses and Christ compared, 21 

Commerce, principles of Christ and 
modern, 164 

Communism, earlier forms of, claim 
authority of religion, 100 

Community, idea in rural life, 63; wel- 
fare of, as end of government, 115; 
democratic government necessary for 
welfare of, 116 

Comparative religion, Moslem view of 
its influence, 249 

Compulsory school system, and child 
welfare, 34 

Concordat of 1919, by ten leaders of 
American Congregational and Epis- 
copal churches, 336 

Conference, (see) Birmingham; Copec ; 
Ethical Forces in Advancing Stand- 
ards in Industry; Faith and Order; 
Hague; International, of American 
States; Lambeth; New York; Stock- 
holm; Washington 

Congregational Church, sacraments in, 
27 


Congregational Council, International, 
339 ; 


Congregationalism, women in its min- 
istry, 310 

Constant, d’Estournelles de, (see) de 
Constant 

Co-operative movements, Church’s aid 
in, 59; credit-banks, F. W. Raif- 
feisen’s, 59; ideal behind farmers’, 
60 

Copec (Conference on Christian Pol- 
sae Economics, and Citizenship), 

Coptic communion, its theory of nature 
of Church, 266 

Country life, its relation to Christianity, 
55; effect of Christianity on, 56; 
effect of modern methods of com- 
munication on religion in, 58; de- 
nominationalism and religion in, 58 

Covenant of League of Nations, 170 

Cromwell, effect of his rule on legisla- 
tive moral reform, 153 

meeee policy of United States towards, 
3 


Dawson, T. C., on benefits of coloniza- 
tion in South America, 213 

Deaconesses, Order of, in Church of 
England, 311 

de Constant, d’Estournelles, on cruelty 
of race oppression, 213 

“De Ecclesia”, Robert Cardinal Bellar- 
mine’s, 265 





INDEX 


Delitzsch, Franz, advocate for the Jews, 
235 

Democracy, inherent in Christianity, 
21; John Calvin’s and John Knox's 
views of, 21; in French Revolution, 
21; Christian influence on modern, 
159; slow development in Great 
Britain, 160; in British colonies, 160 

Denominationalism, in country life, 58 

Diaz, Porfirio, developments during 
régime of, 136; Mexico since over- 
throw of, 137 

Dicey, A. V., on wars of conquest, 216 

Disarmament, and elimination of war, 
169 

Divorce, and family, 48 

East India Company, its governmental 
control in India, 158 

Eastern Orthodox Church, (see) Greek 
Orthodox Church 

Education, in relation to child welfare, 
34; principal remedy for race prob- 
lem, 208; fostered by Christian 
missionaries, 216; World Sunday 
School Association and Christian, 
343; interdenominational control of, 
330 

Edwardes, Herbert, on Christian policy 
in colonial race relations, 217 

Egypt, development of racial self-con- 
sciousness in, 203 

Eliot, George, champions cause of Jews, 
235; Dinah Morris, type of religious 
woman, in “Adam Bede” by, 309 

England, liberalization of strict law of 
medieval, 110; John Richard Green 
on moral change in, 149; authority of 
Bible in, during Puritan age, 150; 
religious division from Ireland a re- 
sult of Puritan epoch, 153; awaken- 
ing of humanitarian spirit in, 157 

Equity, influence of medieval church 
law on, 111 

Ethical Forces in Advancing Standards 
in Industry, Conference on, Toronto, 

- 1924, 93 

Ethics, in city life, 72; Christian, in 
national politics, 167; L. P. Jacks on 
international, 129; religious basis of, 
284 

Eutychian doctrine rejected by Church, 
323 

Evangelical movement, effect on struc- 
ture of British Commonwealth, 158 

Exploration, English, effect of Ref- 
ormation on, 153 

Ezra, Ibn, biblical critic, 236 


403 


Faith and Order, World Conference 
on, 338 

Family, Christ’s conception of, 44; 
apostolic Church and, 44; undermin- 
ing of, in Roman Empire, 45; early 
Christian practice subjected to im- 
pact of Roman and Hebrew customs, 
45; during medieval epoch, 45; in- 
fluence of industrial revolution on, 
46; regulation of labor and schooling 
by State influences, 47; influence of 
double standard of sexual morality 
on, 48; divorce and, 48; permanence 
of, 49; Utopian experiments demon- 
strate State’s necessity for, 49; de- 
velopment of personality function of, 
49; new scope of, 50; religion cul- 
tivated in, 51 

Farmer, his religion, 60; and Chris- 
tianity, 61 

Federal Council of the Churches of 
Christ in America, 340 

Federative union of Church, movement 
towards, 328 

Feudalism, changes created in institu- 
tion of property by, 97; rise of capi- 
talism follows decay of, 

Foundlings’ Home, oldest established 
Aes by Datheus, Archpriest of Milan, 


Francis of Assisi, St., his message to 
modern young men and women, 51 

French Revolution, Christian democ- 
racy in, 21 

Friends, Society of, in relation to theory 
of nature of Church, 267; (and see) 
Quakers 

Gabriol, Ibn, Jewish scholar, 236 

Gandhi, Mahatma K., product of race 
ferment in India, 204; his view of 
Christianity and Hinduism, 252; in 
crusade against “untouchability”, 258 

Germany, United States treaty with, 
1921, 142; women’s position in 
Protestant churches of, 311 

Ghazali, Moslem philosopher, 250 

Gibbons, James Cardinal, on attitude 
se Papacy towards Protestantism, 

Glover, T. R., on character of early 
Christianity, 321 

Goa, Inquisition set up at, 255 

Goodier, Alban, Archbishop of Bom- 
bay, on Christian converts in India, 
204 

Government, welfare and_ personal 
liberty of individual as end of, 115; 
welfare of community as end of, 115; 


404 


Government, continued 
necessity of democratic, 116; basic 
problem of, 116; responsibility and 
rights in popular, 118; obligations 
of individual to his, 118; unquestion- 
ing acceptance of conclusions of, 192 

Greek Orthodox Church, and national- 
ism, 173; theory of nature of, 266; 
interchange of ordaining bishops with 
Anglican churches, 336 

Green, John Richard, on moral change 
in England, 149 

Grotius, his treatise on law of war 
and peace, 112; and Richard Hooker 
on international law, 168; his con- 
clusions on international law, 189; 
reconciliation of his conception of 
international law with doctrine of 
sovereignty, 190 

Gujarat, early Parsi settlement at, 254 

Hague Conference, Permanent Court 
of Arbitration adopted at first, 144; 
Elihu Root’s instructions to Ameri- 
can delegates to second, 144 

Halevi, Jehuda, Jewish scholar, 236 

Harte, Bret, his view of childhood, 31 

Hastings, Warren, idea of colonial 
trusteeship recognized at trial of, 158 

Haussmann, G. E., his street plan for 
Paris, 82 

Hay, John, on desirability of inter- 
national court, 143 

Hee hr ances Treaty, canal tolls and, 
13 


Hebrew Law, neighborly love in, be- 
fore time of Christ, 15 

Hebrew Scriptures, Christian misin- 
terpretation of, 239 

Hegel, G. W. F., on civilization, 351 

Herford, R. T., on Pharisees, 235 

Herrmann, W., on New Testament and 
Christian unity, 321 

Hill, Octavia, aids movement to im- 
prove conditions of English work- 
ingmen, 81 

Hillel, disciples of, protest teaching of 
Scribes, 365 

Hindu, view of philosophy and reli- 
gion, 252; attitude towards prohi- 


bition, 253; standards in sexual 
morality, 253 

Hispanic America, (see) Spanish 
America 


History, philosophy of, 350; contri- 
bution of Christianity to, 359 

Hooker, Richard, on international law, 
168 

Hosea, his view of childhood, 29 


INDEX 


Housing and Town Planning Act, 1909, 
81 


Howard, John, 157 

Hughes, Charles Evans, on Spanish 
American policy, 138 

Humanitarian, spirit, in England, 157 

Hungary, women’s position in Reformed 
Church of, 311 

Huntingdon, Selina Countess of, her 
preachers, 309 | 

Hyacinthe, Pére, C. J. M. Loyson, ad- 
vocate for the Jews, 235 

Immigration, Chinese to United States, 
221; Japanese to United States, 140, 
221; Chinese and Japanese to Can- 
ada, 221; Asiatic to Australia, 222; 
Chinese to New Zealand, 222; Asi- 
atic to South America, 222; J. H. 
Oldham on problem of Oriental, 222 

India, Rudyard Kipling on women 
in, 38; East India Company’s govern- 
mental control in, 158; Parliament 
assumes political control of, 159; 
Gandhi, product of race ferment in, 
204; race problem in, 205; caste in, 
253; Judaism in, 254; meeting ground 
of diverse religious systems, 254; 
Christian missions in, 255; Protes- 
tant missions in, 255; Roman 
Catholic missions in, 255; Anglican’ 
missions in, 255; Baptist missions 
in, 255; Alban Goodier, Archbishop 
of Bombay, on Christian converts 
in, 257; James Bissett Pratt on Chris- 
tian converts in, 257; attitude to- 
wards women in churches of, 315; 


(and see) South India United 
Church 

Industrial Relations, United States 
Commission on, 91 

Industrial revolution, influence on 


family, 46; tends to divorce personal 
religion and social reform, 286 

Industry, personnel movement in, 93 

Inquisition, set up at Goa, 255 

Inter-Americanism, purpose of doc- 
trine of, 185 

International arbitration, (see) Arbi- 
tration 

International Conference of American 
States, treaty drawn up by second, 
180; arbitration agreement of third, 
180; progress made by third, fourth, 
and fifth, 182 

International Congregational Council, 


International court, John Hay on de- 
sirability of an, 143 


INDEX 


International equality, of non-Christian 
nations recognized, 191 

International ethics, L. P. Jacks on, 
129 

International law, Grotius and Richard 
Hooker on, 168; reconciliation with 
doctrine of sovereignty of Grotius’s 
conception of, 190; influence of 
Christianity on, 193; principle of ar- 
bitration now part of, 195 

International relations, movement to- 
wards Christian conception of, 170 

Inter-racial Co-operation, Commission 
on, 209 

Iraq, white race dominant in, 204 

Ireland, religious division from Eng- 
fe result of the Puritan epoch, 

Islam, (see) Mohammedanism 

es L. P., on international ethics, 

Japan, its development as a first class 
power, 219 

Japanese immigrants, 
clusion of, 140 

Jay treaty, 1794, 146 

Jesus, (see) Christ 

Jews, persecution under the Roman 
Empire, 233; under Justinian code, 
233; Charlemagne’s humane policy 
towards, 234; Bernard of Clairvaux 
espouses cause of, 234; slaying of 
Christian children a slander against, 
234; Martin Luther rebukes persecu- 
tion of, 235; attitude of Puritans to- 
wards, 235; Jewish scholars express 
appreciation of Chrisitan teaching, 
236; attitude to Christian missions, 
237; “Jewish peril’, 238; advances 
towards reconciliation with Chris- 
tians, 238 

Jones, Thomas Jesse, on results of 
colonization in Africa, 213 

Josey, C. C., on Christianity and race, 
214 

Judaism, close relation of Christianity 
to, 231; related to Mohammedanism, 
232; new attitude advocated by Pres- 
byterian Church of England, 239; 
need for co-operation with Christian- 
ity, 240; in India, 254 

Jurisdiction, temporal and spiritual in 
Middle Ages, 110 

Justinian, on war, 168 

Justinian code, systematizes anti-Jewish 
legislation, 233 

Kant, Immanuel, on good and evil, 31 


American ex- 


405 


Keiserwerth, Deaconess Institution at, 
ote 

Kidd, Benjamin, on religious influence 
on society, 36, 318 

Kipling, Rudyard, on woman in India, 
38 


Kirk, John, on results of white con- 
tact in Africa, 213 

Kittel, Rudolph, on children’s place in 
development of race, 33 

Klausner, Joseph, Jewish scholar, 236 

Knox, John, his view of democracy 
in Christianity, 21 


Kolis, Christian, and their conver- 
sion, 256 
Labor, regulation of, by State, in- 


fluences family life, 47; unrest and 
discontent of, 91; report of United 
States Commission on Industrial Re- 
lations, 91; present conditions, 103; 
economic problem of Asiatic, 220 

Laissez-faire philosophy of industry 
and trade, 90 

Lambeth Conference, adoption of 
Chicago-Lambeth proposals, or Quad- 
rilateral, by, 333; conciliative atti- 
tude of, 335; “Appeal to All Chris- 
tian People” issued in 1920 by bishops 
of, 335; (and see) Chicago-Lambeth 

Lateran Council, Fourth, edict against 
Jews, 233 

Latin-America, (see) Spanish America 

Law, its secularization an epoch in legal 
history, 107; origin of Roman, 107; 
origin of modern Roman, 108; origin 
of English common, 108; origin 
of American, 108; three elements 
which make up, 108; Christian in- 
fluence on Roman, 109; religious in- 
fluences during periods of growth, 
109; liberalization of medieval Eng- 
lish, 110; influence of jurist-theo- 
logians of Reformation upon public, 
111; influence of Puritanism on 
American, 112; Grotius and Hooker 
on international, 168 

League of Nations, Covenant of, 170; 
Woodrow Wilson and, 142; on co- 
lonial relationships, 217 

League of Religions, organized in Eng- 
land, 239 

Le Bon, Gustave, on hatred between 
nations, 1 

L’Enfant, P. C., his plan for Washing- 
tons Di Ca) 82 

Le Play, Peter, on family life, 49 

Leseur, Paul, his view of childhood, 30 


406 


Lessing, Ephraim, champions cause of 
Jews, 235 
Levitical Law, meaning of neighbor in, 
16 

Liberty, personal, of individual as end 
of government, 115; true conception 
of, 116 

Locke, John, his conception of prop- 
erty, 101; advocate of Christian fra- 
ternity, 326 

London, Christopher Wren’s plan for, 
83, 86 

Love of neighbor, included in Hebrew 
law before time of Christ, 15: sec- 
ond commandment as interpretation 
of, 16 

Luther, Martin, his view of childhood, 
29; rebukes persecution of Jews, 235; 
debt to Jewish scholars, 239 , 

Lutheran Church, organic union in, 
329 

Lutheran World Convention, 339 

Macaulay, T. B., champions cause of 


Jews, 235 

Mackenzie, Jean, on African women, 
37 

Maimonides, Moses, Jewish scholar, 
236 


Malabar, early Jewish settlement in, 
254 


Marriage, spiritual and physical union 
in, 39; importance of spiritual view 
of, 39; new conception of, due to 
Reformation, 46 

Marx, Karl, on civilization, 351 

Mass relations, Christianity and, 1 

Melanchthon, Philip, advocate of Chris- 
tian fraternity, 326 

Mendigo, Elias del, Jewish scholar, 236 

Methodist Church, sacraments in, 274; 
organic union in, 329; Ecumenical 
conference, 339 

Methodist Protestant Church, Rev. 
Anna Howard Shaw ordained in, 
310 

Methodist revival, inaugurated by John 
Wesley and George Whitefield, 156 

Methodists, Primitive, their women 
preachers, 309 

Mexico, and United States, 136; since 
overthrow of Diaz, 137 

Milan, oldest Foundlings’ Home es- 
tablished 787 by Datheus, Arch- 
priest of, 33 

Miller, David Hunter, on war, 170 

Milton, John, advocate of Christian 
fraternity, 326 


INDEX 


Missionaries, colonization and, 213; 
Alexander Agassiz on, 214; colonial 
education fostered by, 216; Moslem 
estimate of Christian, 247 

Missionary churches, new spirit of 
Christian unity in, 330; organic union 
in, 331; need of union in Chinese, 
331; appeal of National Christian 
Council at Shanghai for unity, 331 

Missionary Council, International, 344 

Missionary Society, London, 330 

Missions, new attitude towards, 57 

Missions in India, Protestant, Roman 
Catholic, Anglican, Baptists, 255; 
Valentine Chirol on, 258 

Mohammedanism, Judaism related to, 
232; sex standards and, 253; statis- 
tics, 243; attitude towards prohibi- 
tion, 253; in India, 254 

Monophysites, doctrines of, rejected by 
Church, 323 

Monothelites, doctrines of, rejected by 
Church, 323 

Monroe Doctrine, as foreign policy of 
United States, 130; significance of, 
135, 184; in Venezuelan boundary 
controversy, 184 

Montefiore, Claude G., Jewish scholar, 
236 

Moore, John Bassett, on American 
leadership in cause of peace, 146 

Moral reform, effect of Cromwell’s rule 
on legislative, 153 

Morality, sexual, influence of double 
standard on family relationships, 48 

Morley, John, on John Pym, 152 

Morris, Dinah, in “Adam Bede’, type 
of religious woman, 309 

Mosaic Law, Christ gives a new mean- 
ing to words of, 364 

Moslem view, of Christendom, 242; of 
Scholasticism, 245; of Reformation, 
246; of redemption, 251 

Miiller, Max, Christian scholar, 237 

Mera Church of Christ, nature of, 
68 

National Christian Council at Shang- 
hai, appeals for missionary church 
unity, 331 

Nationalism, Eastern Orothodox Church 
oe 173; of the Oriental churches, 
1 

Nations, in Roman Empire, 2; place of 
Christian Church in development of 
European, 171; recognition of in- 
ternational equality of non-Christian, 
191 


Naval armament, limitation of, 147 


INDEX 


Negro question, in Africa, 206; in 
America, 207 

Nestorian communion, its theory of na- 
ture of Church, 266; its doctrines 
rejected by Church, 323 

New York City, street plan of, 83; 
regional survey by Russell Sage 
Foundation, 87 

New York State Conference of Re- 
ligion, 238 

New Zealand, Chinese immigration to, 
222: attitude towards women in 
churches of, 314 

Nietzsche, F. W., on civilization, 351 

Nitti, Francesco, on morality of Eng- 
lish political life, 151 

Non-churchmen, their view of churches, 
289; fundamental issue between 
churchmen and, 289; disposition to 
evade issue between science and re- 
ligion, 290; common ground of 
churchmen and, 290; task confront- 
ing churchmen and, 291; their atti- 
tude to creeds and practices of 
churches, 292; controversy over fre- 
ligious teaching in schools, 295 

Oldham, J. H., on Oriental immigra- 
tion, 222 

Olivier, Sidney, on motive of colonial 
expansion, 211 

Organic union of Church, movement 
towards, 328; United Church of 
Canada, notable example of, 329; in 
missionary churches, 331 

Oriental churches, nationalism of, 173 

Orthodox Church, (see) Greek Ortho- 
dox Church 

Ownership, necessity and dangers of, 
95; developments in attitude of Chris- 
tianity towards, 95; early Christian- 
ity and, 95; achievements of present 
system of, 103; Christian attitude 
towards, 104 

Pacific, imperial of United 
States in, 133 

Palestine, white race dominant in, 204; 
Balfour Declaration encourages Jew- 
ish settlement in, 235 

Panama Canal Zone, seizure of, 134 

reece Union, formation of, 
8 

Pan-Americanism, and Spanish Amer- 
ica, 138; Simon Bolivar and Henry 
Clay advocates of, 182; James G. 
Blaine’s plan of, 182; Spanish Amer- 
ica’s suspicion of, 183; Woodrow 
Wilson on, 184 

Papacy, Cardinal Gibbons and Bishop 


policy 


407 


Bonomelli on its attitude towards 
Protestantism, 337 

Parental authority, effects of exercise 
of, 49 

Paris, G. E. Haussmann’s street plan 
for, 82 

Parsi, early settlement in India, 254 

Patmos, vision of Christian seer on, 
123 

ae tat in early Christian nations, 

Paul, St., religious chaos of early Ro- 
man Empire provided opportunity for 
his preaching, 6; religion of his 
Gospel, 6; his religion related to 
man’s conduct in earthly life, 6; 
Matthew Arnold on power of his 
teaching, 6; success of his teaching, 
7; his view of childhood, 29 

Permanent Court of Arbitration, 
pet at first Hague Conference, 

Permanent Court of International Jus- 
tice, establishment of, 145 

Personality, development of, as func- 
tion of the family, 49; Christianity 
supreme teacher of, 356 

Personnel movement in industry and 
business, 93 

Philadelphia, street plan of, 83 

Philippines, American policy towards, 
132; American school system in, 132; 
Jones Bill a pledge of self-govern- 
ment to, 133 

Plato, on good and evil, 31 

Platt Amendment in United States 
Cuban policy, 131 

Policy, foreign, definition of, 127; defi- 
nition of Christian, 128; practicabil- 
ity of Christian, 128 

Policy, Spanish American, C. E. 
Hughes on, 138 

Policy, United States of America, to- 
wards Cuba, 131; towards Porto Rico, 
132; towards Philippines, 132; to- 
wards Asia, 138; Open Door, 138 

Politics, principles of Christ and inter- 
national, 165; Christianity can be 
applied beneficently to international, 
165; Christian ethics in national, 167; 
Christian morals in Russian, 173; 
isolation of United States from for- 
eign, 129; United States involved in 
foreign, 129; Spanish-American War 
marks entry of United States into 
world, 131 

Pollock, Frederick, on inability of 
Church to prevent war, 168 


408 


Pompilia, Browning’s portrayal of 
woman in, 38 

Porto Rico, American policy towards, 
132 

Positivists, French and British, on civi- 
lization, 351 

Pratt, James Bissett, on Christian con- 
verts in India, 257 

Presbyterian Church, sacraments in 
274; women’s position in, 310; or- 
ganic union in, 328 

Priesthood, use and abuce of its powers, 
272 

Primitive Methodists, (see) Methodists, 
Primitive 

Profit-sharing, 92 

Prohibition, Hindu and Mohammedan 
attitude towards, 253 

Property, Vernon Bartlet on, 97 ; changes 
caused by feudalism, 97; Puritan 
doctrine of, 99; Locke’s conception 
of, 101; capitalism destroys principle 
of absolute, 101; taxation a denial of 
absolute right of, 101; division of, 
102 

Prosperity, influence on religion, 57 

Protestant churches, their theory of na- 
ture of Church, 266; Bible in, 276; 
advances towards unity within larger, 
328 

Protestantism, defects of, 325; Cardi- 
nal Gibbons and Bishop Bonomelli 
on attitude of Papacy towards, 337 

Puritan, doctrine of property, 99 : 
emigration to America, 153; move- 
ment; British Empire outcome of, 
155; attitude towards the Jews, 235 

Puritan age, dominant influence of Old 
Testament during, 150; religious 
division of England and Ireland a 
result of, 153; English spiritual move- 
ment originating from, 156; results 
of spiritual reaction following, 156 

Puritanism, influence on American law, 
112; influence on English life and 
character, 151 

Pym, John, John Morley on, 152 

Quadrilateral, (see) Chicago-Lambeth 

Quakers, sacraments among, 274; be- 
lief in spiritual equality of men and 
women, 308; (and see) Society of 
Friends 

Race, intermixture of, under early 
Roman Empire, 4; R. Kittel on chil- 
dren’s place in development of, 33 
woman and development of, 37; ex- 
pansion of white, 202; white domi- 


INDEX 


nance in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, 204 

Race problem, in India, 205; General 
Smuts on South African, 206; negro 
question in Africa, 206; in America, 
207; analysis of, 207; education as 
remedy for, 208; new phase of white 
and yellow, 219; new aspect of Ori- 
ental, 223 

Racial relations, of colonizing nations, 
214; trusteeship in colonial, 216; 
pagan and Christian view of, 224; 
resentment of Asiatics to discrimi- 
nation, 227 

Racial self-consciousness, its develop- 
ment in Algeria, 203; in Egypt, 203; 
in Turkey, 204; in Asia, 220 

Raiffeisen, F. W., originator of co- 
Operative credit banks, 59 

Ram Mohun Roy, Raja, leader of 
Brahmo Samaj, 255 

Redemption, Moslem view of, 251 

Reformation, effect on views of mar- 
riage, 46; effect on English coloniza- 
tion, exploration and trade, 153; 
Moslem view of, 246; and early 
Church, 324; churches produced by, 
324 

Reformed Churches Holding the Pres- 
byterian System, World Alliance of 
the, 339 

Regional planning, 87 

Religion, under early Roman Empire, 
2; Pau!’s Gospel, 6; of American 
settlers, 56; influences of material 
prosperity on, 57; in country life, 
8; of farmer, 60; danger of social 
emphasis upon, 62; influence on law, 
109; André Siegfried on English, 
151; patriotism and, 187; Moslem 
classification of, 242; Hindu view of, 
252; non-churchmen evade issue be- 
tween science and, 290; C. P. Stein- 
metz on relation of science to, 290; 
unifying principle of society, 318 

ee Ernest, advocate for the Jews, 

Renascence, and early Church, 324 

Reuchlin, John, defends Talmud, 234 

Roman Catholic Church, sacraments 
in, 273; Bible in, 276; conservatism 
towards Scriptures, 278; Moslem 
view of, 245; remotness of union 
with other Christian bodies, 336 

Roman Empire, brings nations into con- 
tact, 2; spread of Christianity dur- 
ing early, 4; intermixture of races 
and religions under early, 4; pro- 
vided opportunity for Paul’s preach- 


INDEX 


Roman Empire, continued 
ing, 6; undermining of family life 
in, 45; persecution of Jews under, 
233 

Roosevelt, Theodore, arbitration treaties 
attempted by, 145 

Root, Elihu, his instructions to Ameri- 
can delegates to second Hague Con- 
ference, 144 

Rural life, community idea in, 63 

Russell Sage Foundation, regional sur- 
vey of New York City by, 87 

Russia, Christian morals in politics of 
modern, 173 

Sacerdotalism, 271 

Sacramental principle, recognition of, 
275 

Sacraments, in Roman Catholic Church, 
274; in Methodist, Presbyterian and 
Congregational churches, 274; among 
Quakers, 274; principle of, read- 
mitted in Salvation Army, 274 

Saiva, Hindu sect, doctrine of divine 
grace in, 255 

Saloniki, replanning of city, 86 

Salvation Army, in relation to theory 
of nature of Church, 267; principle 
of sacraments readmitted in, 274; 
women in religious work, 309; inter- 
national force in evangelization, 343 

San Francisco, D. H. Burnham’s plan 
for, 86 ' 

Schism, Great, division of Church into 
Orthodox and Roman, 323 

Schopenhauer, Arthur, on civilization, 
351 

Science, woman and, 41; religion of 
farmer and, 60; disposition of non- 
churchmen to evade issue between 
religion and, 290; C. P. Steinmetz 
on relation to religion, 290 

Scribes, disciples of Hillel protest 
teaching of, 365 

Scriptures, Church as custodian and 
interpreter of, 277; conservatism of 
Roman Catholic Church towards, 278 

Semitism, Anti-, as political movement, 
238 

Sexual morality, standards of, in Hin- 
duism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism, 
Bos 

Shaitesbury Act, 1851, for establish- 
ment of lodging-house in England, 
81 

Shaw, Reverend Anna Howard, or- 
dained in Methodist Protestant 
Church, 310 


409 


Siegfried, André on religion in Eng- 
lish life, 151 

Sikhism, sex standards and, 253 

Sitte, C., on medieval street planning, 
83 

Slavery, Christian attitude towards, 96, 
292 

Smith, Adam, on living conditions of 
labor, 103 

Smuts, General, on race problem in 
South Africa, 206 

es morality, Hellenic philosophy on, 
1 

Society, Christian influences on, 299; 
religion as unifying principle of, 318; 
Benjamin Kidd on religious influence 
on, 318 

Sdderblom, Nathan, Archbishop, on co- 
operation among churches, 176 

South Africa, General Smuts on race 
problem in, 206; attitude towards 
women in churches of, 313 

South India United Church, organic 
union of missionary churches, 331 

Sovereignty, State, reconciliation of 
Grotius’s conception of international 
law with doctrine of, 190; right to 
make war in relation to, 190 

Spanish America, its fear of “Yankee 
imperialism”, 134; Pan-Americanism 
and, 138, 183; transition of its states 
to republics, 178; wars and disputes 
of, 1/9; development of principle of 
arbitration in, 179; John Quincy 
Adams on American relations with, 
182 

Spanish-American War, marks entry of 
United States into world politics, 131 

Spengler, Oswald, on civilization, 351 

Steinmetz, Charles P., on relation of 
science to religion, 290 

Stockholm, Universal Christian Con- 
ference on Life and Work, 1925, held 
at, 91, 339 

Stoddard, Lothrop, on Christianization 
of Africans, 214 

Street plan, G. E. Haussmann’s plan 
for Paris, 82; P. C. L’Enfant’s plan 
for Washington, 82; of New York 
City, 83; of Philadelphia, 83; C. 
Wren’s plan for London, 83; H. I. 
Triggs on medieval, 83; C. Sitte on 
medieval, 83; (and see) City Plan- 
ning 

Student Christian Federation, World’s, 
343 

Sunday School Association, World, 343 

Swiss Protestant Federation, 340 


410 


Switzerland, woman's position in 
churches of, 311 

Syria, white race dominant in, 204 

Taft, W. H., arbitration treaties at- 
tempted by, 146 

Talmud, John Reuchlin defends, 234 

Taxation, as denial of absolute right of 
property, 101 

Taylor, Jeremy, advocate of Christian 
fraternity, 326 

Temple, C. L., on destiny of subject 
races, 217 

Testament, Old, dominant influence dur- 
ing Puritan age, 150 

Theatre, its Christian origin, 304 

Tomlinson, J. W., defines modern city 
planning, 82 

Town planning, (see) City Planning 

Trade, English, effect of Reformation 
on, 153 

Treaties, negotiated at Washington 
Conference, 1922, 140; (and see) Ar- 
bitration, Jay Treaty 

Trevecca College, foundation of, 309 

Triggs, H. I., on medieval street plan- 
ning, 83 

Trusteeship, colonial, idea recognized 
at Warren Hastings’ trial, 158; in 
race relations, 216 

Turkey, development of racial self- 
consciousness in, 203 

Unitarianism, in relation to theory of 
nature of Church, 267; woman in its 
ministry, 310 

United Church of Canada, example of 
organic union, 329 

United States of America, isolation of, 
129; changes tending to involve it in 
foreign politics, 129; continental ex- 
pansion, 130; Monroe Doctrine as 
foreign policy, 130; Spanish-Ameri- 
can War marks entry into world 
politics, 131; policy towards Cuba, 
131; policy towards Porto Rico, 132; 
towards Philippines, 132; imperial 
policy in Pacific, 133; extension of 
control to Central American and 
Caribbean states, 134; influence in 
destroying Central American Court 
of Justice, 135; exercise of interna- 
tional police power, 136; Mexico and 
136; Asiatic policy of, 138; entrance 
into World War, 141; treaty with 
Germany, 1921, 142; interest in pa- 
cific settlement or international dis- 
putes, 143; Canada and, 143: Chinese 
immigration, 221; Japanese immi- 
gration, 140, 221 


INDEX 


Unity of Church, (see) Church 

Universal Christian Conference on 
Life and Work at Stockholm, 91, 339 

“Untouchability”, Gandhi in crusade 
against, 258 

Urban, civilization, religious institu- 
tions in, 64; religious enterprise, 66; 
congestion and effect on city Church, 
68 


Usury, attack on, by medieval Church, 
97 


Vaishnava, Hindu sect, doctrine of di- 
vine grace in, 255 

Vedas, their influence on social reform 
in India, 256 

Venezuelan boundary dispute, Monroe 
doctrine in, 184 

Vivekananda, Swami, his influence on 
Hindu social reform, 256 

Vote, as moral obligation, 120 

Wagner, Charles, his view of child- 
hood, 30 

War, changing attitude of nations to- 
wards, 167; Justinian on, 168; Gro- 
tius and Richard Hooker on, 168; 
disarmament and elimination of, 169; 
David Hunter Miller on, 170; sov- 
ereignty of State and right to make, 
190, 191; attitude of Church to- 
wards, 284; Christian attitude to- 
wards, 305; (and see) Spanish- 
American War, World War 

Washington, Conference of 1921-1922, 
140, 147 

Washington, D. C, P. C L’Enfant’s 
street plan for, 82 

Wesley, John, Methodist revival in- 
augurated by, 156; advocate of Chris- 
tian fraternity, 326 

Wesleyan revival, its impetus to wo- 
man’s work in churches, 309 

Whitefield, George, Methodist revival 
inaugurated by, 156 

Wilberforce, William, 157 

Wilson, Woodrow, and League of Na- 
tions, 142; on Pan-Americanism, 184 

Woman, Christ and, 37; in India, Kip- 
ling on, 38; modern inventions in 
relation to domestic activities of, 39; 
in business, science, civics, and 
Church, 41; task facing modern, 42; 
women and churches, 309; (and see ) 
Australia; Canada; China; Church 
of England; Congregationalism; Ger- 
many; Hungary; India; Methodist, 
Primitive; Methodist Protestant ; 
New Zealand; South Africa; Switzer- 


INDEX 


Woman, continued 
land; Unitarianism; Wesleyan 
vival 

haere Missionary Service League, 

World Alliance for International 
Friendship through the Churches, 341 

are Conference on Faith and Order, 
3 

World Missionary Conference in Edin- 
burgh, 1910, 331 

World War, effect on religious convic- 
tions, 57; Christianity nationalized 
during, 174; entrance of United 


Re- 


411 


States into, 141; violation of Armis- 
tice terms, 142 

Wren, Christopher, his plan for Lon- 
don, 82, 86 

“Yankee Imperialism’, Spanish-Ameri- 
ca’s fear of, 134 

Young Men’s Christian Association, 


342 
Young Women’s Christian Associa- 
tions, 342 


Zachariah, his view of childhood, 29 
Zwingli, Ulrich, advocate of Christian 
fraternity, 326 





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